Free Market Solutions

 The United States is now standing at a crucial crossroads in the effort to reform health care: more government control vs. greater choice and competition in an open marketplace. The ultimate decision is thus between competing visions of whether power in the health care marketplace should reside with individuals or with the government. 

Clearly, the direction of the massive reforms being designed and debated is to provide far greater control, powers to tax, expenditures, and intervention to the government. Though well-intended – with the goal of achieving greater health, equity, consumer protection, cost-efficiency, and effectiveness of care – measures that expand government influence often achieve the opposite. Further, this path can also lead to harms that reach beyond the realm of economics or even that of health.

 

Choice and competition are of paramount importance in every dimension of health care – from health insurance, medical technology, treatment, the creation and use of medications, the daily work of health care organizations and physicians, to hospital administration, research, and, underlying all, the rights of individuals to make private decisions about their personal care. Further, consumer choice and competition deliver higher quality and lower prices in nearly every other area of the economy. Allowing choice and competition can do the same for health care.

 

The research and articles below provide detail analysis of how free market solutions can be applied to health care. Without a genuine free market – to instead allow a more centralized, politicized control of health spending decisions – health care costs will remain too high, the value of health insurance too inadequate, and the quality of health care too low. 

 

Studies

Articles/Op-eds

Podcasts

Books

 

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