Thank God for Wal-Mart's Monopsony

Wal-Mart may be blocked by Big Banking and other special interests from offering cheap banking services to its customers, but a recent article in Fortune shows how the company is taking on Big Medical and slashing health care costs.

Stop by the Wal-Mart in a place like Owasso, Okla., five miles northeast of Tulsa, and you do see signs of something interesting going on...A smiling receptionist hands out fliers touting a flat $45 fee for "Get Well" visits. That price includes all the tests necessary to diagnose and prescribe for everyday ailments like colds, flu, strep throat and pink eye. If you're uninsured, as roughly half the clinic's customers are, it's a big saving over the $95 or so that a regular doctor's visit would cost in this part of the country, and a huge savings over the $400 a hospital emergency room might charge... (Thirty minutes south down Highway 169, the Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow touts an "end-of-season special" on flu shots--"Now only $20.")

This mix of transparent prices, electronic efficiency (patients can access test results online using a password), and convenient hours (7 A.M. to 7 P.M. weekdays, 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. Saturdays, and noon to five on Sundays) looks, for now at least, like a winning formula.

Ok, this isn't enough to solve our country's health care problems (which would take a combination of deregulation, market restructuring, and voucherization - basically the Massachusetts Plan without the mandates); but it's a huge step in the right direction. Wal-Mart is an expert at using its market power (some would say its monopsony) to benefit its customers by forcing prices down and changing how major industries do business. Its entrance into the health care market will lead to lower prices, more health care choices, less waiting time, and innovations across the industry. Plus, Dick Cheney will be able to buy his rifles and treat his friends for gun-shot wounds at the same time.