Like It or Not, Our Healthcare System is the Result of Market Forces

Producers are guided in their plans by the price of goods and services. They provide that which has, or which they predict will have, a good price. Since taxes and government programs have favored HMO's over the last few decades, producers respond to what the HMO's are willing to pay. As the health care consumer has had more to spend through their HMO's, a lot of expensive procedures were the natural outcome. That is good if it is what people want. In actuality, it has been what the government told us we wanted. Medical insurance has been highly regulated at the state and federal levels. Various terms and coverages have been mandated. Policies that do not meet certain minimums of coverage are forbidden. Expensive diagnostic imaging and other tests have become the standard. Elective surgeries with marginal benefits, such as some orthopedic procedures, have become more common. Of course, in this country, the standard applies to everyone, including welfare and medicare cases. For better or worse, without making a value judgment, it is easy to see how higher medical costs have resulted. Government involvement seems to be giving us more medicine than we want to the point we can hardly afford it. (Now the BHO/Congress plan is to require even more extensive coverage for everyone, which we are told will somehow cost less.)

A beneficial result of our current system is that innovations proliferate and competition brings prices down. Even in our over regulated and distorted medical market this is happening to a surprising degree. The government is trying to tell us how technical breakthroughs will dramatically improve alternative energy technology. This seems like a much better possibility for the near future in the area of medicine than energy. Our task should be to allow the market more freedom to work its wonders. This should involve tinkering with the system we have, not radically remaking it.