Healthcare is an inherently different industry than providing air transportation, ground transportation or telephone products. Inherently different in that people choose — and market forces define — the choices when flying, purchasing a car or using the telephone. People do not make a choice to participate in healthcare service, therefore market forces cannot define the choice, since “choice in healthcare” is simply a paradox.

In my view, some industries should find the free-market principle applied fully, and others should not. The application of the free-market should be predicated on whether a citizen has a choice to participate in that industry or not. For example, the need to protect our country(military) and the need to be healed(healthcare) when we are sick are not choices. Using an Iphone on the AT&T network are choices. America should have a single-payer military, and a single-payer healthcare system, but not a single telecommunications provider.

Our application of a singular, “free-market” philosophy propped up by exclusions, rationalizations, inequitable provision of government aid has resulted in a failed healthcare industry, a failed automobile industry, a largely failed airline industry, and an arguably failed telecommunications industry. Currently, the US government is providing government support for limited industry participants in banking, insurance and automobiles. This inequitable support creates a false, free-market in which businesses gain an unfair competitive advantage through access to the government. Businesses that should fail because there is not market interest in the products offered, or because they have been inefficiently managed, do not. In this case, the benefits of competition are negated and the “free-market” is simply not free.

America needs to move past it’s singularism in regards to the marketplace, and embrace a pluralist approach which applies true free-market principles to businesses in which citizens choose to participate, and government support for services in which participation is not optional. We need to create competition AND quality of life.

The real-world result of singularism is a limited American job landscape. This landscape is a direct result of anemic innovation, invention, and emerging business. In the simplest terms, it is healthcare that makes hiring an American prohibitively expensive in today’s marketplace. Combine that hiring disincentive with a workforce stuck wherever they happen to be by spiralling healthcare costs, and what you have is a deeply troubled America.