If the government takes over medical-care in this country there is little doubt that we will eventually have to start looking for alternative sources. The national health services in Britain and Canada are proof of that. I suggested in a previous post that Cuba should seize the opportunity to start exporting medical-care to citizens of the US, since Michael Moore has assured us that Cuba has an excellent medical-care system.

That was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but I do believe this presents an opportunity for one of the impoverished Caribbean islands. A company or consortium of companies should put together a proposal to establish a huge medical complex on one of the islands. This med-plex would specialize in providing the medical services that would be hard to get through Obamacare. It could also include luxury resort hotels for their wealthy patients and family members and less expensive quarters for the not so wealthy.

The consortium could include insurance companies that offer policies to cover the kinds of medical-care provided at the med-plex. These policies could vary from covering all medical-care the insured might need to covering only those procedures and treatments denied by Obamacare. They could also cover the travel expenses. Since the insurance companies operate off-shore they won’t be subject to all the restrictions imposed by the US government. Neither will they be subject to any of the protections, but a free market should give us all the protections we need.

Speaking of a free market, there is no reason this has to be restricted to one consortium and one island. If one med-plex operation becomes successful there will be others. Three-hundred million people is a big market.

I suspect that such a consortium would have little trouble finding an island nation willing to host a med-plex. The boost to the island’s economy would be huge. It’s also possible that Indian reservations in the US could host such med-plexes — like they’re able to host gambling casinos in states that don’t allow casinos.

I don’t think the consortium would have any problem recruiting all the good doctors it will need.

It amazes me that there are still people who think that the government can improve their lives over the long-term by creating additional costly bureaucracies. Do you really think medical care is going to be better with the government more involved in supplying or controlling it? Then consider this: Would you prefer a public defender or a private attorney to defend you in a criminal case?

You could argue that a public defender is better than no attorney at all, and you would probably be right. You could also argue, correctly in most cases, that public medical care is better than no medical care at all. But, if you try to use this argument to defend the need for Obamacare you are way off-base. Public medical care is already available. Obamacare is being pushed because the currently available public medical care is not as good as the currently available private medical care. That is, the Obamacare proponents are admitting that public medical care is not as good as the private medical care available to those who can afford it, and they want to remake the medical care system so that this disparity is removed.

So, the real question is: How will Obamacare remove the disparity? Will it bring the public medical care up to the level of the private medical care? Will it bring the private medical care down to the level of the public medical care? Or, will they meet somewhere in the middle? This leaves out the worst-case outcome — that Obamacare turns out to be worse than the currently available public medical care, which I think is a very real possibility.

Obama is not saying that our private system is not providing good medical care; he is saying that some people can’t afford it. He is saying that the public system is not providing good medical care to those who can’t afford the private care. That is, he is saying the private system is working and the public system is not working. So, he wants to replace the private system with a new public system. Go figure.

I want to emphasize that Obamacare is more concerned with leveling the availability of medical care than with improving the quality of medical care. There are three ways to level something: (1) grind off all the high points down to the lowest low points and discard the excess material, (2) bring in extra material and fill in the low points up to the highest point, or (3)  chop off the high points until you have enough material to fill in the low points so that the whole surface is even and smooth. In most cases the latter is the most efficient and inexpensive. Since Obama insists that he will lower the overall cost of medical care, don’t look for him to use the second method. And God help us if he uses the first method.