Do you know what we haven't had in a while? A bubble to bust. Many warn that it could be the “everything” bubble. Run to the hills because the sky is falling! Now don't get wrong, we have serious problems, and we are without leaders to lead us through troubled waters, but there is still, dare I say, hope. There are institutions primed to bust and I am going to give my best guess of what it will be and how we “could” recover from it. I feel as though I am very qualified to make this prediction because as many of you already know, I have seen several covers of the Wall Street Journal.
So what’s it gonna be; cryptocurrency? Education? Housing, again? Nope, I believe it will be medical care. And when that bubble busts it’s gonna hurt, literally. To better understand how I got to this conclusion we need to revisit the housing bust of the 2000s.
It pretty much boils down to one thing, race. Traditionally mortgages are the safest investments a bank can make. They have high standards in qualifying individuals before supplying a home loan. You have to prove that you can pay them back and have a history of making good on loans of the past. This is not unreasonable at all. Well not so fast, politicians deemed these requirements racist.
Politicians cited a study that showed whites were approved for loans at a higher rate than blacks and that blacks also had more subprime loans than whites. On the surface, this was true and only based on race and did not account for not income or credit score. It must also be pointed out that this was true regarding black-owned banks. What is also true is that Asians were approved at a higher than whites and whites had more subprime mortgages than Asians. Those numbers do not fit the narrative that politicians and the media lyke to preach about.
So, what happened? The Federal government strong-armed banks into making risky loans. So much so that they sued banks that did not fit arbitrary quotas set by idiots who by most accounts never worked in the real world. Then those same geniuses started guarantying some of those risky loans. (Sadly, this still has not ended and the FHA has nowhere near the funds to cover their ass if there are mass defaults) Between 2005-2007 people who had zero business purchasing a house defaulted on their loans and we had to pick up the pieces.
There is no such thing as a free lunch!
It's hard to blame the people who defaulted. They asked for a loan and then got it. If your 3-year-old asks for a whole cake for lunch and you give it to him, should you blame the kid for getting sick? No, it's Big brother who forced you to give your toddler a whole fricken cake for lunches fault.
Pay attention because this is a recurring theme. The US Government creates a crisis, so they then try to fix the crisis, and when their policies ultimately fail, we are left in a real crisis. It is not just the feds that are the problem either. What happens when local governments implement rent control? It creates a shortage of affordable and quality housing. Developers are not going to build housing if there is a limit to how much profit they are allowed to make. Interesting that luxury homes and exclusive condos are exempt from most of those rules though. Just as Dr. Malcom always says that nature will find a way, the market will always correct itself.
So, after causing a recession, what did our government decide to destroy next? Medical Care. In the not-so-distant past, health insurance was a novel thing. People paid as they went and for major procedures, they paid monthly. Then they began getting insurance to cover major procedures. Annual doctor visits and checkups were not part of the plan. And why should they? Does your car insurance cover oil changes or tune-ups? Nope and that's pretty much what an annual visit is anyway. Health insurance was affordable and during the 50s it even became part of employee benefits packages.
Then insurance prices began to rise. Why? For one, medical care costs began to rise, but ultimately the biggest reason was government regulations Basic policies had to cover an array of services from mental illness to cosmetic surgery to fertilization to contraceptives. And still with all that baggage health insurance pre-Obama was affordable.
Again the government lyked to spout out the numbers of the uninsured (roughly15% of Americans) out of context. A lot of the uninsured were young and healthy people who for reasons of their own decided to take the risk. It was their choice. Insert Barrack and delete freedom of choice.
Obamacare was rammed through Congress and down our throats. I do have not the tyme or energy to go through all the aspects of the bill that didn't even have anything to do with healthcare. It was a lot, by the way, look it up yourselves and tell me about it.
While you’re at it, who honestly believed the government when they said they alone could lower the costs of medical care? The same people associated with waste and the $100 hammer preached that they could do the impossible. I don’t know if people are stupid or just willfully ignorant, either way, they still vote democrat.
On a personal note, once Obamacare went through, my insurance went from $200 a month to over $650. So much for the Affordable Care Act.
There was one red flag everyone seemed to miss, Insurance companies unanimously supported Obamacare. That should have been enough to cause concern. Well, I believe we should really start to be concerned today. Medical facilities are popping up at an alarming rate. Most of them are just a doc-in-box variety, but even so, it is at an unsustainable rate.
When the Dotcom bubble burst, or the Beanie Baby Bubble Burst they only affected a specific group of people. When the medical care bubble finally bursts, we are all in trouble. How can we fix it? First, we need to lower medical care costs. We can do that by limiting malpractice awards given by juries. Another way to reduce frivolous lawsuits is by having the losing party pay all court expenses. In my opinion, this is used far too little. We should put doctors on a salary and not get paid per procedure. This only causes doctors to do many unnecessary treatments to make extra money. Nurses could also do a lot of the lifting; this would bring down costs as well.
We should also be wary of medical providers merging. Once they have a monopoly, they will only raise prices. Locally, this is happening a lot.
The next thing we could do is strip away many of the mandates. We need to allow insurance companies to offer catastrophe insurance. Give us the power to find a plan that we want. If you want a plan that covers nose jobs, then by god add it to your cart. It is not that hard to come up with simple ways to lower costs, as long as you don’t work for the government that is.
The bottom line, get the government out of the way so we can make real change, not that bullshit Obama promised. May peace be with you.
Look at that, I did a whole post about healthcare and not once did I mention how Ochsner is the most vile medical provider in the history of mankind and should be forced to close its wicked doors for good. I am proud of myself, normally once hospitals are brought up I cannot help but to proclaim my disdain for that abomination of a so called place of medicine.
OK, now you may leave with peace.