November 2024
There are two major crises facing the United States: health and education. Both could be solved in short order by utilizing the most powerful free market tool: the voucher.
Let me explain why it works so well. Currently, and for some time, the professionals in these trades have had a lock on the market. In the case of health care, the insurance companies, the hospitals, big pharma, and doctors have played a nifty game where they all scratch each other’s backs. Left out of this equation is the consumer, assumed to be too stupid to know what is good for him.
The same is true in education. Whether we like it or not, it is a caste system. Parents who can’t afford private education must rely on what they get from the public school system. In 1980, as Chairman of the Education Voucher Study Committee working under the auspices of the Boston Finance Commission, we attempted to change that. It was a version of the UBI, universal basic income, idea but the dollars were restricted to educational purposes. Everyone, regardless of income, would get a variety of vouchers for their school age children. Again, it is assumed that parents are too stupid to know what is best for their children and can’t be trusted with so much money.
The only school that would have to accept a child was the public school closest to her or him, geographically. The child could apply to any school that the parents wanted and could afford based on the voucher subsidy. This voucher would be enough for the local principal to run her or his school.
The argument was that the public schools would be stuck with the deplorables, and the schools couldn’t manage without additional money. The answer is: that may be true, but there are a variety of “add on” vouchers that address that issue, based on family income, special needs, vocational training and so on.
The reality is that about 80% of children will attend public schools and we don’t anticipate that that will change much all long as the principals are answerable to a bureaucracy, not to the parents of their students. In effect, it would turn all public schools into private schools where their funding comes through the parents not the school district. That is the genius of this system: it puts genuine free market principles (and principals) to work.
If Americans have the guts to really rely on free market forces, Adam Smith’s invisible hand, they could solve their problems quickly. Right now, we have basically a socialist monopoly running our public schools.
The same would be true if we had the guts to give Americans a voucher for their health care and trust them to spend it wisely. How much better to have 300 million citizens with a stake in getting value for money spent rather than having all those choices rammed down our throats by “experts” who are sometimes biased about what we need because of kickbacks of various kinds. It is a sad fact that about half of oncologists’ income is derived from companies whose chemotherapies they wouldn’t give their family members or themselves.
We brag about how we love free enterprise, but we have allowed ourselves to be snookered into a corner where all the decisions are made by the oligarchies whose lobbyists eliminate competition, liability for their products, and push for consolidation. That may be why big agriculture, big pharma, big chemicals, big foods, and all the other bigs have maneuvered to control big media and big tech, so that the “average Joe” can be hoodwinked at every turn. Whether you are a farmer forced to buy sterile GMO seeds every year or be suited by a raft of lawyers, or a patient who wants to try “alternative medicine,” or a parent who wants to homeschool her child, the system is against you, and you end up, if you are able, paying through the nose for what you actually want and need.
Do you think that all the pharmaceutical ads on TV might be a payoff against objective reporting about their products? Media’s life blood used to be whistles blowing foul! Those days are gone. They promote the hand that feeds them.
Think about it. Would you rather have an allowance to stay healthy with a catastrophic insurance backup policy, or continue to watch your teeth and health rot because the system is too cheap to let you get your mouth fixed?
Would you rather have a principal of your child’s school worry about meeting your expectations or just have him worry about keeping his boss happy.
The choice is yours. Talk to your legislators and demand creative legislation that puts competition back in our economy and stop socialistic monopolies for the rich and dog eat dog capitalism for the poor.
