The same surface rationality that would call for a state Bureau of Automobiles applies to the aggressive regulation of medical care. We hear constantly that our medical care is too expensive, of too uneven quality, and produces results far too poor for the money we spend. It is easy to marshal statistics which show that medical results in America are poorer than in our peer countries, despite much higher spending.
These statistics, though, are highly suspect for many reasons. Consider just one measure that is often used to prove the superiority of socialized systems to the American health care system: infant mortality. In the United States medical teams almost always try to save every baby, regardless of its chances of survival; in many “advanced” countries babies are counted as stillborn if their chances of survival are deemed too low. Hence the US can simultaneous save more babies’ lives while appearing to have a higher infant mortality rate.
In comparing apples to apples you get a much different picture. Statistics like infant mortality and lifespan are poor measures of the health care system, because they measure many variables in one overall number (average life spans, for instance, are influenced by murder rates, car accidents, risk-taking behavior, diets, genetic variables, etc.). If you compare medical care to medical care, the U.S. system looks considerably better.
Consider cancer survival rates. If you examine five year survival rates in the United States versus Europe, a startling fact emerges: Americans have far higher 5-year survival rates from cancer. Among women the 5 year survival rate for Europeans is only about 90% of America’s. Among men the difference is stark indeed: European men have only 71% of the 5-year survival rate as American men. American health care starts to look pretty good.
And measurable outcomes are only one component of consumer satisfaction, which should be the goal of health care providers. Just as with other kinds of consumer products, it is impossible for a panel of experts to define what is “right” for consumers, no matter how precise their data or how sophisticated their models of what we “ought” to want. Government planners are no better equipped to manage and regulate our health care system than the supply and demand for automobiles.
Just as in other areas of life, there is no “one size fits all” model of health care provision.
There is no doubt that our current health care system needs reforms, largely due to the enormous government intervention already present in the system. Government directly pays for about 45% of health care expenditures, and influences the totality of spending through tax subsidies of third-party payer systems. These interventions distort our health care spending enormously.
The solution, though, is not more government intervention in the system, but less. The logic of consumer sovereignty which works in the automobile, housing, food, and consumer products sectors of our economy should be applied as well to the medical sector as well. Freer markets really are the most effective way to increase consumer satisfaction.