I agree that healthcare is a human need and a community necessity. However, I do not agree that competition within a market would achieve prices lower than those in single-payer nationalised systems, which have been around as long as the American model, but are 50-70% cheaper in some cases. This is because they spread the liabilities mor…
I agree that healthcare is a human need and a community necessity. However, I do not agree that competition within a market would achieve prices lower than those in single-payer nationalised systems, which have been around as long as the American model, but are 50-70% cheaper in some cases. This is because they spread the liabilities more widely and are able to negotiate costs more aggressively, something individuals cannot do. Such nationalised systems can also proactively spend more on prevention knowing it will cut costs later, as well as benefitting from economies of scale, and also not having the overheads of having to provide profits for shareholders at many points along the healthcare providing process. Nor am I convinced that anti-monopoly practices can be enforced in a deregulated market, or that such deregulation won't lead to potential major health / pharmaceutical scandals worse than those that already occasionally slip through. You also have far belief in the potential of individual charity than I do to cover what a competitive paid-for health service would not, but I appreciate your optimism.
Having said all of that I am not in favour of markets for essential services at all on, or the commodification of medicines (or even food for that matter) on philosophical / moral grounds, and I'll be covering this in the next couple articles in this series.
I agree that healthcare is a human need and a community necessity. However, I do not agree that competition within a market would achieve prices lower than those in single-payer nationalised systems, which have been around as long as the American model, but are 50-70% cheaper in some cases. This is because they spread the liabilities more widely and are able to negotiate costs more aggressively, something individuals cannot do. Such nationalised systems can also proactively spend more on prevention knowing it will cut costs later, as well as benefitting from economies of scale, and also not having the overheads of having to provide profits for shareholders at many points along the healthcare providing process. Nor am I convinced that anti-monopoly practices can be enforced in a deregulated market, or that such deregulation won't lead to potential major health / pharmaceutical scandals worse than those that already occasionally slip through. You also have far belief in the potential of individual charity than I do to cover what a competitive paid-for health service would not, but I appreciate your optimism.
Having said all of that I am not in favour of markets for essential services at all on, or the commodification of medicines (or even food for that matter) on philosophical / moral grounds, and I'll be covering this in the next couple articles in this series.