A Sign of Failure in the Health Care System

From the NYT "Frustrated by runaway health costs, the nation’s largest employers are moving rapidly to open more primary care medical centers in their offices and factories."

Firms are supposed to specialize in what they do best. For example, you wouldn't expect Pepsi to make its own vehicles, rather Pepsi should buy them from other firms because Pepsi should be much worse at making cars than automobile firms are. Pepsi, therefore, would only make its own cars if something was seriously wrong with the automobile industry.

According to the above cited article, however, Pepsi and several other firms are opening "primary care medical centers in their offices and factories." Pepsi must think that it can provide better/cheaper medical care than hospitals and HMOs.

Why is the health care industry so messed up that Pepsi can out perform specialized health care providers? I suspect the government is somehow at fault. Perhaps Pepsi's health clinics don't have to follow as many government rules as an HMO. For example, an HMO might have to provide coverage for sex change operations while Pepsi's health clinics wouldn't. Or maybe Pepsi doesn't have to follow the same staffing rules that the government requires hospitals to follow.

Much of economic growth comes from specializing. Whatever is requiring firms such as Pepsi to "unspecialize" by providing health care is greatly harming our economy