Comments on: Increasing Affordability Key to Increasing Health Care Access http://www.showmedaily.org/2009/06/increasing-affordability-key.html Advancing liberty with responsibility by promoting market solutions for Missouri public policy Thu, 24 May 2012 00:36:33 -0400 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Josh Smith http://www.showmedaily.org/2009/06/increasing-affordability-key.html/comment-page-1#comment-2855 Josh Smith Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:32:32 +0000 http://www.showmedaily.org/?p=5222#comment-2855 Most people don't know how to repair their own car, so they call on an expert. There is every incentive for auto repair shops to take advantage of ignorant customers by calling for more work than is really necessary, and many shops do this. But some don't and they find themselves working at capacity during all open hours. You can often tell the honest mechanics simply by asking how long it will be until they can take a look at your car(this method is not perfect, but it is a decent indicator). As I see it, the present Mayo Clinic model should, economically speaking) be suffering from a shortage of care-- meaning that the customers who demand Mayo-quality care at the Mayo price should outstrip the ability of the MC to provide for them all. Reasons why this might not be the case: 1. People are ignorant of the cost/benefit analysis of various healthcare institutions 2. it is for some reason inefficient to comparison shop I think option 2 is far more likely here, especially when individuals don't face the cost of their care, they will certainly be willing to acquiesce to additional expensive treatment options. I propose something utterly un-addressed in the article: Break up the AMA monopoly on healthcare. This proposal has been trotted out before by no less a free-market public policy advocate than Milton Friedman, who realized that, as with all things, restricting supply results in increased costs and shortages. As with auto-repair, better service at a lower price will win in a market sense, with the added benefit that the internet offers a wonderful tool for allowing individuals access to remarkable amounts of in-depth local information. Google maps will even now allow you to rate you experience at local businesses, and in a deregulated healthcare market this would be only one of many avenues to precious information available to customers. Most people don’t know how to repair their own car, so they call on an expert. There is every incentive for auto repair shops to take advantage of ignorant customers by calling for more work than is really necessary, and many shops do this. But some don’t and they find themselves working at capacity during all open hours. You can often tell the honest mechanics simply by asking how long it will be until they can take a look at your car(this method is not perfect, but it is a decent indicator).

As I see it, the present Mayo Clinic model should, economically speaking) be suffering from a shortage of care– meaning that the customers who demand Mayo-quality care at the Mayo price should outstrip the ability of the MC to provide for them all. Reasons why this might not be the case:
1. People are ignorant of the cost/benefit analysis of various healthcare institutions
2. it is for some reason inefficient to comparison shop

I think option 2 is far more likely here, especially when individuals don’t face the cost of their care, they will certainly be willing to acquiesce to additional expensive treatment options.

I propose something utterly un-addressed in the article: Break up the AMA monopoly on healthcare. This proposal has been trotted out before by no less a free-market public policy advocate than Milton Friedman, who realized that, as with all things, restricting supply results in increased costs and shortages. As with auto-repair, better service at a lower price will win in a market sense, with the added benefit that the internet offers a wonderful tool for allowing individuals access to remarkable amounts of in-depth local information. Google maps will even now allow you to rate you experience at local businesses, and in a deregulated healthcare market this would be only one of many avenues to precious information available to customers.

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