From Fil Sanna
New Glarus
To the editor:
Much of the defense of the Republican healthcare legislation centers around the idea that health insurance will improve if subjected to free market forces. There are multiple problems with viewing health insurance as a free market: (1) insurance in general is different than markets for most other things people buy, (2) healthcare is too complicated for consumers to evaluate, (3) for a free market to work, you couldn't have the "moral hazard" of providing care to the uninsured.
First of all, many other types of insurance are not allowed to function as free markets: Drivers are compelled to purchase car insurance and anyone with a mortgage is compelled to purchase homeowner's insurance. And for good reason. Insurance is different than purchasing something tangible with direct, immediate benefits. It involves definite short-term costs for potential long-term benefits. Much research has shown this is a classic situation in which even the most rational and disciplined people make faulty decisions.
But more important than this, when it comes to healthcare, can anyone be expected to understand all the possible health problems they might have, what different treatments are available for those, how the different providers in their area compare in their quality of offering for those treatments and finally, which are the best value? This is insane to expect - even for doctors. Not to mention, who is going to willingly choose the "cheap" option for healthcare if they had the means not to? "Hey, this insurance costs $100 less per month, but all the doctors in our network graduated from medical school with a 2.2 GPA or less." It is completely ridiculous to expect consumer decisions to result in market efficiency of the healthcare market.
Finally, the only way for the free market to truly create competition among providers is if the products in question can only be obtained through normal consumer purchasing. I can't just go up to an airline and demand a seat ... as a result, airlines are forced to compete fiercely to offer me good service at low prices. But in healthcare, are we really going to have a society in which people who need care will not receive it?
Because unless and until we say "yes" to that question, the idea of using free markets to drive down healthcare costs is a chimera.
New Glarus
To the editor:
Much of the defense of the Republican healthcare legislation centers around the idea that health insurance will improve if subjected to free market forces. There are multiple problems with viewing health insurance as a free market: (1) insurance in general is different than markets for most other things people buy, (2) healthcare is too complicated for consumers to evaluate, (3) for a free market to work, you couldn't have the "moral hazard" of providing care to the uninsured.
First of all, many other types of insurance are not allowed to function as free markets: Drivers are compelled to purchase car insurance and anyone with a mortgage is compelled to purchase homeowner's insurance. And for good reason. Insurance is different than purchasing something tangible with direct, immediate benefits. It involves definite short-term costs for potential long-term benefits. Much research has shown this is a classic situation in which even the most rational and disciplined people make faulty decisions.
But more important than this, when it comes to healthcare, can anyone be expected to understand all the possible health problems they might have, what different treatments are available for those, how the different providers in their area compare in their quality of offering for those treatments and finally, which are the best value? This is insane to expect - even for doctors. Not to mention, who is going to willingly choose the "cheap" option for healthcare if they had the means not to? "Hey, this insurance costs $100 less per month, but all the doctors in our network graduated from medical school with a 2.2 GPA or less." It is completely ridiculous to expect consumer decisions to result in market efficiency of the healthcare market.
Finally, the only way for the free market to truly create competition among providers is if the products in question can only be obtained through normal consumer purchasing. I can't just go up to an airline and demand a seat ... as a result, airlines are forced to compete fiercely to offer me good service at low prices. But in healthcare, are we really going to have a society in which people who need care will not receive it?
Because unless and until we say "yes" to that question, the idea of using free markets to drive down healthcare costs is a chimera.
