There is a economic concept that would strengthen your argument - inelastic demand. Health care has inelastic demand. If you are healthy you don't use it. If you are sick, like a diabetic, you will pay any price for insulin, because if you don't get it you are dead. Private systems take advantage of this and jack up prices. As you said, government competition, or strict regulation, prevents gouging. The anti-regulatory angle is a tool of wealth to consolidate that wealth. Competition does this too. If public radio and public TV compete with private media for ears and eyes, it keeps private media on their toes. Ending public media ultimately means we rely on corporate propaganda for news. That corporate media, just as happened in corporate health care, consolidates and eventually destroys itself. Regulation and competition keep systems healthy. Our system, as you rightly diagnosed, is sick.
Internet should be free for everyone. So should healthcare, utilities, with affordability in housing, food, and any other necessities. Capitalism is killing this country! Greed is rampant!
You are the voice I've been looking for. The Thomas Paine of our times. I just signed up as a paid SS subscriber last night. I want to help but am 78 and not sure how. My career was in corporate communications. I want to learn how to do video editing to help you. We need to redefine Capitalism that works for working people. We need to build a new taxpayer owned health insurance company that uses AI to review and process claims and doesn't skim profits. A new Manhattan Project to help all working people to be able to afford decent health care. It's TIME TO PUT WORKING PEOPLE FIRST. Thank you for your astounding essays!
I think you should get together with Saikat Chakrabarti,, who is running for Nancy P{elosi's seat... he has much the same view, but calls it a return to FDR days... I agree with both of you...
The argument that the Health Insurance industry made during ACA drafting was that they can’t “compete” against a “subsidized” plan like Medicare.
They were trying to say that Medicare is inefficient but bilks the taxpayer to “subsidize” rates.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Medicare has a lower admin cost overhead than private insurance (meaning more efficient).
The answer back this time has to be, “Don’t be afraid of real competition, are you a capitalist or a monopolist?”
The other answer is, “we are accountable to voters, if we are bilking them with taxes that are too high, they will vote us out. That’s not Communism, it’s Democracy.”
"Nothing could be further from the truth. Medicare has a lower admin cost overhead than private insurance (meaning more efficient)."
Indeed! Medicare's overhead costs are approximately 3.5%, whereas a full 33-35% of private premiums vanish into the pockets of the executives and shareholders. So government run healthcare insurance is 10 times as efficient as private insurance.
The crux of the problem is that free-market solutions will not work with healthcare... Adam Smith defined a free market as one where a buyer can decline to buy, and a seller can decline to sell; healthcare fails BOTH tests. This is why "market forces" cannot contain healthcare costs... frankly, the only people who don't intuitively understand this are those who seek to gain by not understanding. Either by reform or by guillotine, the obscenely wealthy must be brought to heel. Reform will be much easier for all of us.
"...free-market solutions will not work with healthcare." Thank you! Education, healthcare and defense do NOT belong in the marketplace. They are different from consumable products and the capitalist system does not work for them.
Incredibly insightful. Healthcare in America is synonymous with health insurance. One cannot be discussed without the other. No matter where a human is in the world, healthcare is personal - between the human and the provider(s). The ‘personal’ is and has been removed and that is a key ingredient in the mess we see today. “If we can’t get healthcare to become substantially cheaper, I’m talking about half the price, we’re in big trouble” is the conversation everyone needs to consider. Nothing will change without the public asking questions over and over and I imagine this will happen as people either opt out of unprecedented premium rates or loose their minds (and health) hustling to afford while still facing high deductibles and out of pocket costs (not to mention denials, appeals, prior auths etc). The game has been rigged and now is the time to rise and commit to a New Way.
Ohh I love this. Most striking line, for me: "There's nothing inherently better about a corporation than a county." Counties, as you point out, have some democratic accountability baked in -- but they also have the ability to be *inefficient* when necessary. Government doesn't have to move slow and create waste, and it should do far less of that than it does now... but it CAN leave profit on the table or make decisions with a longer-term goal in mind. Corporations can't. The incentives are all messed up. Public competition, in this way, is more nimble.
Well said. Bear in mind that everything out of the mouths of Repugnicans is a lie of bad faith. "Socialism" is meant to tar public expenditures when they benefit the public -- an absurd position, manifestly stupid but caterwauled often enough to sound menacing. Socialism for the rich is what we have, but they call it "capitalism". which is also wrong. Why do "free market" enthusiasts clamor constantly for their "right" to free money, protection of their idle riches, and protection of their propertied privilege? It's not an ideology, it's not "conservatism", it's not capitalism -- it's corruption. Let's democratize the economy, democratize capital, democratize corporations, so that our collective strength builds our collective wealth instead of getting it siphoned off to holders of pieces of paper? I've stopped listening to bullshit. Let's drop the lamentations and build ourselves a more perfect union. Finish the War of Independence, preserve government for the people.
Firstly, we need to get on top of AI. NAFTA has been talked about here. AI is the same class of thing, abstractly justified by people with no personal skin in the game. More accurately, they stand to benefit at our expense. They're gambling with our futures and we're underwriting it. Ditto crypto. Learning lessons from past mistakes is good but reversing realized damage is much harder than preventing it in the first place and rich fuckers like Musk have much more in store for us.
I am fully in agreement that we need to be building and investing as was done before. I thought this would be a great example of exactly the kind of investment this government should be doing and decided to share it here.
[Trying to make a story, read a story, from 12-2025 Trump-MAGA economic charts and polls] the story the charts tell doesn't match the feeling in the air. Why? Mainly because the metrics he reaches for do not capture people’s experience with price rises people react to. In a nutshell: the public complains about the rising thresholds younger adults have to cross to build a stable life.
[Re complaining about Boomers this other unknown author] measures average wellbeing (inflation adjusted median income). But that’s not the complaint. The public’s complaint is the rising cost of entry price. Rather than simply “Boomers are richer,” it is “what does it cost today to join adulthood in the way Boomers did 1955-1985?”
Better metrics to capture this complaint are:
- price-to-income,
- rent-burden distribution,
- down payment burden relative to income,
- homeownership age shifts,
- household formation delays, and
- the share of wealth coming from unearned asset appreciation versus earned wages.
The way I (Odd_Under) see it:
- Boomers were early entrants into an economic regime where cheaper leverage and constrained supply bid up assets faster than wages,
- Then they aged into ownership of the scarce and appreciating assets,
- Now they are the generational face of a system being spread thin.
Everything can look more or less fine on national median charts. Yet this hides how entry ramps to a stable life steepen, and resentment gets mis-aimed, uselessly, at the Boomer generation.
Tho above i focus on housing, a bundle of higher entry thresholds now exists for young generations to enjoy the “good life” they saw Boomers promising younger generations. College education is another big one.
I look at thresholds as the combined cost of rent, while saving, house down payment, student debt, credential expectations, and job-tied health insurance, all constrained by where the jobs are.
Those thresholds rose because expanding credit (mortgages and student loans) let prices and gatekeeping move faster than wages, especially where housing supply is tight.
You can blame Boomers for some policy choices, yet a lot of those choices were shaped by hard-to-grasp incentives (incumbent homeowners, debt subsidies, local veto power). So younger generations blame older generations instead of focussing on changing the oligarch-determined drivers of our economy.
There is a economic concept that would strengthen your argument - inelastic demand. Health care has inelastic demand. If you are healthy you don't use it. If you are sick, like a diabetic, you will pay any price for insulin, because if you don't get it you are dead. Private systems take advantage of this and jack up prices. As you said, government competition, or strict regulation, prevents gouging. The anti-regulatory angle is a tool of wealth to consolidate that wealth. Competition does this too. If public radio and public TV compete with private media for ears and eyes, it keeps private media on their toes. Ending public media ultimately means we rely on corporate propaganda for news. That corporate media, just as happened in corporate health care, consolidates and eventually destroys itself. Regulation and competition keep systems healthy. Our system, as you rightly diagnosed, is sick.
Internet should be free for everyone. So should healthcare, utilities, with affordability in housing, food, and any other necessities. Capitalism is killing this country! Greed is rampant!
You are the voice I've been looking for. The Thomas Paine of our times. I just signed up as a paid SS subscriber last night. I want to help but am 78 and not sure how. My career was in corporate communications. I want to learn how to do video editing to help you. We need to redefine Capitalism that works for working people. We need to build a new taxpayer owned health insurance company that uses AI to review and process claims and doesn't skim profits. A new Manhattan Project to help all working people to be able to afford decent health care. It's TIME TO PUT WORKING PEOPLE FIRST. Thank you for your astounding essays!
Private delivery publicly funded
I think you should get together with Saikat Chakrabarti,, who is running for Nancy P{elosi's seat... he has much the same view, but calls it a return to FDR days... I agree with both of you...
We cofound BNC and JD together and worked together in AOC’s office. He’s a close friend.
You got me. You make a lot of sense and I’m paying to keep you going!
Socialism: expecting government services in exchange for the money you pay in taxes. Is that really such a radical idea?
What else would taxes be for?
Well yes, that's it! Let's just make sure everyone pays their proportionate share.
The argument that the Health Insurance industry made during ACA drafting was that they can’t “compete” against a “subsidized” plan like Medicare.
They were trying to say that Medicare is inefficient but bilks the taxpayer to “subsidize” rates.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Medicare has a lower admin cost overhead than private insurance (meaning more efficient).
The answer back this time has to be, “Don’t be afraid of real competition, are you a capitalist or a monopolist?”
The other answer is, “we are accountable to voters, if we are bilking them with taxes that are too high, they will vote us out. That’s not Communism, it’s Democracy.”
"Nothing could be further from the truth. Medicare has a lower admin cost overhead than private insurance (meaning more efficient)."
Indeed! Medicare's overhead costs are approximately 3.5%, whereas a full 33-35% of private premiums vanish into the pockets of the executives and shareholders. So government run healthcare insurance is 10 times as efficient as private insurance.
The crux of the problem is that free-market solutions will not work with healthcare... Adam Smith defined a free market as one where a buyer can decline to buy, and a seller can decline to sell; healthcare fails BOTH tests. This is why "market forces" cannot contain healthcare costs... frankly, the only people who don't intuitively understand this are those who seek to gain by not understanding. Either by reform or by guillotine, the obscenely wealthy must be brought to heel. Reform will be much easier for all of us.
"...free-market solutions will not work with healthcare." Thank you! Education, healthcare and defense do NOT belong in the marketplace. They are different from consumable products and the capitalist system does not work for them.
Here’s another bullet point for your evidence section - North Dakota’s public bank. Gets a mention in the link below.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/11/17/ellen-brown-why-new-york-city-needs-a-public-bank/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Incredibly insightful. Healthcare in America is synonymous with health insurance. One cannot be discussed without the other. No matter where a human is in the world, healthcare is personal - between the human and the provider(s). The ‘personal’ is and has been removed and that is a key ingredient in the mess we see today. “If we can’t get healthcare to become substantially cheaper, I’m talking about half the price, we’re in big trouble” is the conversation everyone needs to consider. Nothing will change without the public asking questions over and over and I imagine this will happen as people either opt out of unprecedented premium rates or loose their minds (and health) hustling to afford while still facing high deductibles and out of pocket costs (not to mention denials, appeals, prior auths etc). The game has been rigged and now is the time to rise and commit to a New Way.
Ohh I love this. Most striking line, for me: "There's nothing inherently better about a corporation than a county." Counties, as you point out, have some democratic accountability baked in -- but they also have the ability to be *inefficient* when necessary. Government doesn't have to move slow and create waste, and it should do far less of that than it does now... but it CAN leave profit on the table or make decisions with a longer-term goal in mind. Corporations can't. The incentives are all messed up. Public competition, in this way, is more nimble.
Well said. Bear in mind that everything out of the mouths of Repugnicans is a lie of bad faith. "Socialism" is meant to tar public expenditures when they benefit the public -- an absurd position, manifestly stupid but caterwauled often enough to sound menacing. Socialism for the rich is what we have, but they call it "capitalism". which is also wrong. Why do "free market" enthusiasts clamor constantly for their "right" to free money, protection of their idle riches, and protection of their propertied privilege? It's not an ideology, it's not "conservatism", it's not capitalism -- it's corruption. Let's democratize the economy, democratize capital, democratize corporations, so that our collective strength builds our collective wealth instead of getting it siphoned off to holders of pieces of paper? I've stopped listening to bullshit. Let's drop the lamentations and build ourselves a more perfect union. Finish the War of Independence, preserve government for the people.
Firstly, we need to get on top of AI. NAFTA has been talked about here. AI is the same class of thing, abstractly justified by people with no personal skin in the game. More accurately, they stand to benefit at our expense. They're gambling with our futures and we're underwriting it. Ditto crypto. Learning lessons from past mistakes is good but reversing realized damage is much harder than preventing it in the first place and rich fuckers like Musk have much more in store for us.
I am fully in agreement that we need to be building and investing as was done before. I thought this would be a great example of exactly the kind of investment this government should be doing and decided to share it here.
https://benjaminschneider.substack.com/p/trains-and-transmission-a-solution
Corbin, some striking clarity here on economics; specifically, newer generation frustration when they try to follow Boomers into “the good life:”
Heavily revised from: Odd_Understanding on Reddit. You can start a chat with him on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/1pqr4t4/against_against_boomers/
Dec 19, 2025
[Trying to make a story, read a story, from 12-2025 Trump-MAGA economic charts and polls] the story the charts tell doesn't match the feeling in the air. Why? Mainly because the metrics he reaches for do not capture people’s experience with price rises people react to. In a nutshell: the public complains about the rising thresholds younger adults have to cross to build a stable life.
[Re complaining about Boomers this other unknown author] measures average wellbeing (inflation adjusted median income). But that’s not the complaint. The public’s complaint is the rising cost of entry price. Rather than simply “Boomers are richer,” it is “what does it cost today to join adulthood in the way Boomers did 1955-1985?”
Better metrics to capture this complaint are:
- price-to-income,
- rent-burden distribution,
- down payment burden relative to income,
- homeownership age shifts,
- household formation delays, and
- the share of wealth coming from unearned asset appreciation versus earned wages.
The way I (Odd_Under) see it:
- Boomers were early entrants into an economic regime where cheaper leverage and constrained supply bid up assets faster than wages,
- Then they aged into ownership of the scarce and appreciating assets,
- Now they are the generational face of a system being spread thin.
Everything can look more or less fine on national median charts. Yet this hides how entry ramps to a stable life steepen, and resentment gets mis-aimed, uselessly, at the Boomer generation.
Tho above i focus on housing, a bundle of higher entry thresholds now exists for young generations to enjoy the “good life” they saw Boomers promising younger generations. College education is another big one.
I look at thresholds as the combined cost of rent, while saving, house down payment, student debt, credential expectations, and job-tied health insurance, all constrained by where the jobs are.
Those thresholds rose because expanding credit (mortgages and student loans) let prices and gatekeeping move faster than wages, especially where housing supply is tight.
You can blame Boomers for some policy choices, yet a lot of those choices were shaped by hard-to-grasp incentives (incumbent homeowners, debt subsidies, local veto power). So younger generations blame older generations instead of focussing on changing the oligarch-determined drivers of our economy.
I just learned about this group and wanted to share with the America's Undoing krewe. Maybe y'all could do a collab or something! https://pnhp.org/