Government monopolies don’t innovate. Profit seekers do.
Posted by Don Bryant on July 3, 2009
I have been a fan of national health insurance. It has seemed absurd to me to base health insurance on place of employment and the happenstances of the market place. A civilized culture should be less ruthless about its health care than ours seems to be. Conscience and decency demand better.
But the fly in the ointment is that government monopolies don’t innovate. Profit seekers do. What is true about other goods and services in a capatilistic society is also true when it comes to health care – the profit motive will yield the most good for the most people. This is an undeniable empirical fact.
Our future experience in health care will depend in large measure on keeping the profit motive at the core of health care.
I am no expert in this field, but I imagine that 80% of all the health issues we face are rather routine and managable. We do not need a doctor making $300,ooo a year taking care of us in such cases. Nurse practictioners are more than capable of handling the vast majority of our health needs. It is that 20% that needs attention and for us to receive the excellent care we desire, those doctors are going to have to paid handsomely for the expertise – the research, the development of procedures and protocols, the tools, the diagnostic equipment. These are things that are not going to get done if the profit motive is depressed. Of course, now many of the cures we consider routine were at one time cutting edge and the result of companies and individuals seeking profit. When that instinct is depressed we will find a parallel depression of quality of care.
That is the way it is. We can imagine another world in which this would not happen. But in this world it will happen. If we depend on altruism to get the job done, we are deluded. Anyone who is dealing with government knows that the mindset of performance is “no matter what I do, I will not lose my job and you must be satisfied with what I do” mentality. Do we expect this to change when it comes to health care?
Bob Griffin said
If most or all of the fairly recent medical discoveries and advances have been made in the US, your point is made. If however they were made in countries which had some sort of nationalized health care, then that point is weakened.
On a general level, I wonder what sort of profit motive drove Stallmann (of G.N.U.), or Linus (or Linux), or the inventor of MYSQL?
Be Well,
Bob Griffin