I happened to glance at the cover of Businessweek and saw an amazing headline: “What’s Really Propping Up the Economy: Healthcare added 1.7 million jobs between 2001 and now. The rest of the private sector? None.” I immediately contextualized this result as a trade-off: the private enterprise model of medicine provides shitty healthcare at extremely high prices, but the duplication of labor inherent in a field of several companies competing for the same market (and probably some other, more subtle factors that I haven’t thought of) creates lots of jobs.
HMOs are the Republican New Deal, taxing sick people to fund private industry to create jobs. Discuss.