I have been thinking for years that the only economic entity that might be able to take this on is Wallmart. I believed that if there was a single thing Barack

I have been thinking for years that the only economic entity that might be able to take this on is Wallmart. I believed that if there was a single thing Barack Obama could do, it would have been to convince Wallmart to heavily invest in healthcare, the point of building clinics. Walmart is quite a different beast than other companies. Walmart, by strategy, does not compete on margin, they compete on volume. Since high margins are a problem for volume, they actively try to suck out margins in a product all along the value chain. Walmart pushes suppliers to improve their own cost metrics and has enough power to do it. They basically use their leverage to force down prices, knowing they'll make it up in the long run on volume. This is a very, very different approach to business than basically anywhere else, and possibly has ever existed and it's one of the few magic things that makes Walmart what it is. The 'literati' classes love to hate on Walmart, but consider how powerful this machine is: it basically sucks profits and inefficiency out of the value chain like a vacuum, handing over the surpluses to consumers. They basically enable 100 million Americans to live at a standard of living not otherwise possible. Health Care is the most bloated sector in the entire world, and there's so much juicy fat to be cut, if there's any operational entity has the scale, operational ability, customer reach, efficiency to pull this off it's walmart. I hope they expand into basic medicine, family medicine, all of the basic kind of testing, and insurance. I can't say I'm otherwise a huge fan of Walmart, but if they end up raping and pillaging healthcare in the US, they could literally be creating the biggest benefit capitalism ever provided for Americans. I'm a huge, huge fan of this. I haven't stepped into a Walmart in years, but I'm thinking I need my teeth cleaned ...