Our health care problems are cause by our unrestrained free market, right?
We have severe problems with health care in America. This is because of our unbridled free market, right? Actually, we have not had a free market in American health care in many decades, and that is the cause of our problems. The cattle prod of the tax code skews health care and insurance costs way out of proportion to the rest of the economy. Medicare and Medicaid have spawned massive amounts of regulations that severely hamper the efficiency of health care delivery. Medicare regulations have largely killed house calls. Layer upon layer of government bureaucracy stifles medical care in the United States. We are at least half socialized in our medical system.
Even HMOs are not a free market creation. Congress put them in the mainstream with the HMO Act of 1973, another layer of interference with free markets. If we want to look at what a free market in health care looks like, typical American medicine is not the place to look. There are other realms, such as medical tourism, that show what a free market can do. My medical practice is another example. Read The High Price of Socialized Medicine to learn the details about the many ways our government has destroyed a free market in American health care, and also to learn about how real examples of free markets in medicine work.