It is still and always will be evidence that government is simply–too big.

OK, fair points ..as produced by fear mongering Democrats.

Scales seems to believe I’ve spent five decades (yeah–he is being tongue-in-cheek)  at the pulpit preaching some Reagan-era economic gospel, and now, cue the red hats and Chinese manufacturing, the altar’s finally cracked. Nice imagery. But my friend.. let’s turn down the incense for a moment and get serious.  (It’s great discussion–that needs to happen however)

The video shared paints another emotionally charged picture—hospitals bought by private equity, loaded with debt, and discarded like yesterday’s newspapers. And it’s supposed to prove that capitalism—deregulated and unchained—is to blame for failing healthcare in urban OR rural areas.

But here’s the truth: none of that happens in a (truly) free market.
Private equity doesn’t write the rules. It plays by them. And those rules are written in Lansing, Washington, and yes, often with a heavy pen from the very sort of big-government thinkers who now weep over their predictable outcomes.

The Government-Built Cage

Let’s talk about Michigan’s Certificate of Need (CON) system.
CON laws, born in the 1970s and sustained by big hospital lobbying, mean that anyone who wants to add beds, open new surgical centers, or create lower-cost care options has to beg permission from the very competitors who would lose business.

That’s not free market capitalism.
That’s a state-enforced cartel.

And it doesn’t stop there. These laws:

• Suppress innovation by making it cost-prohibitive for small operators to enter the market.

• Protect the top-heavy hospital monopolies—whose inefficient administration is never asked to compete.

• Keep prices high and options limited, especially in rural areas.

“But private equity!” — Yes, and?

I’ll concede a simple point: private equity benefits from these systems.
But don’t confuse exploitation of a broken system with causing the break.

If smaller, more efficient, community-rooted providers could operate freely—if they weren’t prevented from existing (by large controlling hospital systems), or strangled by red tape and forced into compliance with bloated mandates—then the debt-loading shell game wouldn’t exist.

Monopolies would be obsolete.
Local solutions would flourish.
And yes—rural folks wouldn’t be stuck with a failing fortress 30 miles away when all they needed was an urgent care on Main Street.

Lets put this into context–If instead of a 500 employee megalith hospital center fails, it’s a harder package to replace than a 30-50 employee operation.  Oh, and worried about those expensive machines that ‘only the big guys can afford?’ See below.

My $60 X-Ray

Let me offer a real-world example.

Not long ago, I needed a chest X-ray. I didn’t go to a major hospital with marble floors and 17 vice presidents. I went to a private imaging clinic. Two shots. Professional staff. Quick turnaround.

Cost? Sixty dollars.

No fanfare, no billing maze, no five-page explanation of benefits.
It worked—because it was small, efficient, and unencumbered by the bureaucratic sclerosis that defines most major hospital systems today.

So what’s the solution?

It’s not banning private equity or adding more federal micromanagement.

It’s shrinking government’s footprint in the economy. It’s repealing Certificate of Need laws and letting people solve problems with creativity, technology, and yes—capital investment unshackled from crony rules.

Keep fraud laws? Absolutely.
Protect patients from snake oil? Of course.
But quit pretending that Lansing or the federal government can regulate us into a better future while it protects the worst parts of the past.

Final Word

You can call it Reaganomics, call it capitalism, or call it common sense:
Let the people build. Let the ideas compete. Let the patient choose.
And maybe next time a rural hospital closes, we’ll stop asking why the vultures came—and start asking who killed the system in the first place.