What If We Had A Food Maintenance Organization (FMO)?

What if your employer reduced your monthly paycheck by the amount of dollars he or she sent to a FMO the way employers now perform regarding your family’s healthcare? Healthcare dollars sent to Health Maintenance Organizations by employers average $1000 per month. Just take the average dollars you now spend monthly for your family of four and do the math. Let’s just keep it simple and figure $2,000 per month to feed a family of four.

HMO’s siphon off 25% of the money they receive to pay their employees in the multiple layers of that bureaucratic organization. The FMO would do the same, leaving $1500 per month to purchase you groceries. However, the provider in this system (analogous to your primary care physician) is your local grocer. He has had to hire a crew of clerical workers to handle the paperwork generated by the FMO that need filled out for every purchase that every customer makes.

Another group of new employees work the telephones getting permission from the FMO to sell you the food you want to purchase; type and amount. If the FMO agrees they will reimburse the grocer 30 to 50% of the price he has set for the food you buy. The FMO keeps the difference to satisfy their stock holders by sending annual dividends and give bonuses to their top managers at the end of the year. Every three years they negotiate an increase in the dollars they receive from your employer for the purchase of your family’s food.

In order to keep afloat financially your grocer has had to raise his prices and buy inferior food products that are less expensive (I.e. generic canned foods in white labels with black block letters that spell CORN, BEANS, etc.). The meat you used to get was prime but he has had to settle for USDA inspected meats. Because he has had to procure cheap vegetables from Mexico that are grown in fields irrigated with less than pure water, your grocer has had to acquire liability insurance to cover the costs of being sued by sick customers who became ill when eating the tainted onions, tomatoes, etc; which recently caused the demise of a famous chain of Chichis Mexican Restaurants. Eventually the grocer takes an early retirement because and sells the store he can no longer afford to stay in business. You initially pay nothing for the food, but soon the FMO requires a co-pay so that they can keep even more of the money they received from your employer.

All the while the cost of purchasing food products rises (a fact noted by the federal government), FMOs grow richer and the country’s grocers poorer. Before long grocers all over the nation fall prey to the FMO fiasco and close up shop. Potential grocers are afraid to start new businesses. The federal government informs us that food prices are far too high. The administration declares a national food emergency and comes to the rescue by setting up national food banks in every major city; but not the small towns because of the cost. Though groceries are free, access to food is limited and soon rationing becomes necessary. Those in the senior age category will receive limited amounts because they have out lived their usefulness to society as a whole. When the cost of supplying free food to the nation exceeds the federal government’s ability to cover the cost, taxes will rise.

If you think this allegory is a pipe dream, just wait until Obama-Care becomes the law of the land and then put you doctor in the place of your friendly grocer; that is if you can find one, most having retired or switched professions out of frustration.