Internet's buying power

Well! This will be an interesting first blog. I just posted this series of questions/statements on fivethirtyeight.com and while I don't think anybody is going to read this blog (since there is nothing here) I figured I might as well post this. The article I commented on was about the amount of donations from the health insurance industry (or something along those lines) that our representatives have received. (I'm adhd btw so if somebody has already taken up this idea and I just missed it.. sorry!)

"I have a couple of what will probably be considered stupid questions. Why do we need congress and the president to set up a single payer system? We have the Internet. We have shown ourselves capable of incredible feats of organization. We clearly have the money (considering how much people are already paying for their crappy health care). Why are we going the Republican rout of wasting all that money using our *individual* buying power instead of our *collective* buying power? Why couldn't we just take the corruption out of the equation by bypassing the government altogether? That would also eliminate the need to placate the republicans. If they and theirs have troubles maintaining their private options.. too bad! Thats the free market (since we wouldn't be going through the government :D). I mean, they are fine and dandy with massive corporations decided what products live and die with THEIR massive spending power, so why not us? :D
I'm sure we could get somebody like Dean or whoever to negotiate for us. I mean I understand that it would probably be a huge undertaking.. but it could actually get done. If its not a good idea, then why isn't it? I'm very curious as to why I don't see other people suggesting this. I mean.. we got Obama into the white house with what amounted to a single payer system didn't we? We even gave Bauchus a run for her money within a very short time (we lost but it was still impressive) Heck we could get everybody solar panels, Internet, all that good stuff much cheaper if we took government out of the equation (not in a libertarian way of destroying government, just in an internet way of doing it ourselves). Without the republicans constantly watering down our bargaining position we could get quite the deal I imagine. Whatcha think?"

And thats that!