http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E4QQ20100415?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FhealthNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Health+News%29
Many will look at this and say: See you cannot leave them to the “free market”. They will never do the right thing.
In response to this complaint, one of the commentators on the article said what I would have said but much better than I could have said it:
And these are the “honest” corporations that Tea-Party-ers and Republicans want to be left to themselves in a “free-market”, because “unregulated” big business will “benefit” the American people.
Sure, it will (!).
A truly “free” market would have no constraints on medical services, medicines, or licensure.
As soon as a government places restrictions on obtaining medical services, that government has created a restricted market that can be monopolized and leveraged against those who need it. Limiting free access to medicines or procedures naturally turns them into products and excludes segments of the population that cannot afford those products.
It is a governmentally-derived limitation that creates such a market (one which is no longer “free”). Thus, it automatically becomes the obligation of that same government, which created a situation excluding part of its population from access to care, to put into place those mechanisms of regulation that will restore access to excluded populations.
In other words, the medical market ceased to be “free” as soon as care and medicine were regulated in any form. We cannot now pretend that leaving those companies and institutions which provide governmentally authorized medical care to themselves in any way constitutes “free-market” practice, since in reality it is government-enforced “closed market” monopoly commerce.
Presently, before any of this new bill goes into effect, the “free market” medical industry already has to spend upwards of 340 billion per year to comply with government regulations. It has not been a free market for decades. The problems that we now have in accessing cost effective medical care are directly a result of the government already having crippled the market with its restrictions, regulations and price controls.
Please we have got to learn what the free market is and what it is not.
You've heard me get on this soap box a million times. There is something wrong with a company involved in providing wellness to people that has to answer to analysts' quarterly earning demands. I am of the firm opinion that having hospitals and insurance companies publicly traded forces them into what we would consider unethical practices to meet those quarterly demands.
ReplyDeleteI think they should all be changed to nonprofits.
;-)
We have no more right to health care than we do food. We have every right to pursue them. Should grocery stores be non profit? Health care is also a commodity. And as such is best served by free market. If we had free market health care (which we do not have), we would not have shortage and would not be in the predicament we are now in. If we had free market health care, it would be profitable to provide this service efficiently, effectively, and affordably.
ReplyDeleteBesides profits are important. It is with profits that research and innovation thrive. Those who decry profit-making do so out of a misunderstanding of basic economics. Statistics that I have seen show that government sponsors only a small fraction of research (something like 2 percent) in the medical industry. The rest come out of the profits of the industry. Everything that I see convinces me that the problems we have in delivery and access and affordability of health care come out of government involvement distorting the market process.
ReplyDelete