Why Is Health Care "Different"?
The United States of America, a nation that was founded on principled individualism, seems poised to expand government intervention into the health care sector. A rowdy debate has been joined in newspapers across the country: one side condemns the failure of the free market to provide Americans with affordable care, while the other warns against Canadian-style waiting lists and doctor shortages. The American health care system, however, is far from a free market. As I wrote here three months ago , its problems are exaggerated and are actually due to high costs brought about by sundry government interventions. As for the other side of this debate, the Canadian system does have some serious problems. Despite what Michael Moore claimed in his “documentary” Sicko, Canadians often do wait many long hours in emergency rooms, and many long months for diagnostic tests and treatments. Practically every Canadian knows someone who has skipped across the border to pay out of pocket for a more timely MRI or surgical procedure in the U.S. At the same time, claiming that the Canadian system’s very real problems are inevitable ignores the far better results achieved in certain European countries. Of course, the best of these systems, such as France’s and Sweden’s, are more successful than Canada’s precisely because they do a better job of imitating the free market. But then, if imitating the free market delivers better results, why not let the free market provide health care directly, the way it provides clothing, cars, computers, and countless other goods and services?
Jul 24, 2009
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