Free market not working in US health care
A recent letter suggested that fixing our health care system required Obamacare be “remade by the GOP” using “affordability and free-market incentives.”
First, we don’t have a health care “system.” Instead, we have groups competing for the health care money pie, including hospitals, physicians, the pharmaceutical industry, insurers, and chronic care facilities. The principle driving each is profit maximization, not improving national health care. We spend twice that of any other Western nation, yet score low on measures of health care quality. We are not getting value for our money.
Second, the “free-market” isn’t working. Our current health care consortium is the most unleashed of any Western nation and we’ve seen what that’s delivering. This is after decades of both red and blue control in Washington.
To work properly, capitalism requires buyers and sellers making informed, rational choices. You can take your time and compare supermarkets, used cars, fishing poles and lawn care services. Not so in health care. The consumer is almost totally dependent and uninformed. Choice of tests, imaging studies, medications, therapies, surgical procedures, hospital admissions are taken on faith, not knowledge. Nobody can comparison shop. The results we get for the amount spent proves this.
Capitalism is a great system. However, certain critical, necessary, societal services do not lend themselves to a free-market, capitalist approach: public education, police protection, fire protection, our military and national infrastructure to name a few. Health care falls into this category. We will be collectively stronger if we’re individually more educated, more safe, more secure and healthier.
Dr. Thomas Downs
Beaufort
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This story was originally published January 26, 2018 at 12:36 PM with the headline "Free market not working in US health care."