Milton Friedman - Health Care in a Free Market

Milton Friedman fields questions from medical professionals at the Mayo Clinic regarding his advocacy of a free market in health care. http://www.LibertyPen.com

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[kwc9672]

P.S. crony-capitalism is a product of government picking winners and losers. Free markets don't allow for the government to pick winners and losers. Auto-bailout is a perfect example of crony capitalism. Instead of forcing the unions to renegotiate pensions and have GM go through a managed bankruptcy, which they would have survived. We bailed them out so that no restructuring or renegotiating would take place, which would have been better for the company in the long-run.

[Liberty AboveAllElse]

Churches used to run hospitals for charity, taking from those who could afford and charging less to those who couldn't. Private charities assured there were no abuses as commonly happens with medicaid and medicare. They had to in order to serve as many as they did.

They saw it as following in Jesus' footsteps as one of Christ's miracles was to cure the sick. It was a mission. Sadly that mission was usurped by the federal government and distorted to the point where it is now unrecognizable.

[Sergey Kazantsev]

Liberals create the "poor" and they hold on to each other ( poor for libs and libs for poor)election after election, until economy will be destroyed completely and the country will fall apart like USSR.

[Greaseball01]

Well if the hospital you chose in advance is a forty minute drive away and you're choking on a constant stream of your own blood I dare say the paramedics are going to decide they don't have time for the forty minute drive and they'll take you to the hospital that's ten minutes away instead, on account of that being the sensible thing to do.

[nustada]

The problem you describe is only a problem from a statist paradigm. In a free market, you would choose in advance which dispatcher, or arrange in advance which hospital you use.

Also without government "regulation" there would and could be inexpensive clinics that specialize in stabalisation.

At the moment most of your bill goes to feeding government "regulators" and compliance, government "regulations" prevent specialization which eliminates competition and market growth to meet demand.

[nustada]

Hospitals have a bad bottom line because of the following. Government meddling in limiting supply in licensing, mandates on professional training, FDA compliance, medical facility regulations. Those Gov. requirements also prevent specialization causing over-complications in billing leading to waste and error. Government also causes excess demand via dangerous public roads, "free" Medicare and Medicade, subsidizing bad food EG corn syrup, and inculcating children to a culture of violence.

[nustada]

Emergencies are externalizes. Internalizing externalities is what insurance is for. If a hospital was not willing to negotiate in advance with insurance companies, it would loose business to those that do.

In a free market an emergency room would not do what you describe. For the same reason if you order a filet minion for $20 at a restaurant, they don't deliver you a chuck roast and charge you $100000.

[snagillim]

of the "other forces" i mentioned one is price inelasticity in healthcare which exists because people in emergency situations often don't have the option to shop around, which is why an aspirin in the emergency room costs roughly 12 bajillion dollars. There's plenty of scholarship on why the free market doesn't function well to lower prices in healthcare markets.

[nustada]

In a free market, I would imagine the following. I would think schools would open to train "medical technicians". They would learn maybe one operation well and receive certification for said procedure. The low cost of training more people would compete for the business of doing that operation. Insurance would probably require that enough better trained general surgeons are on site in a clinic to assist with occasional complications. People would probably only use insured and certified techs.

[nustada]

What is the limiting factor in the creation of competition in the medical industry? I would say, licenses and general education requirements to do business.