Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (67585)	10/16/2008 4:11:32 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Quality of care is not simple to measure Actually for a lot of the work passed to the private sector, it is. It's routine operations and the like, and success/failure is easy to determine. In many areas market solutions tend to be better than government solutions but the reason for this is not because the companies providing it are private, but because they face a real competitive market. Now that may be the case. Mass healthcare is not a perfect market for many reasons, and probably can't ever be - the barriers to entry are far too high, the consumer generally lacks perfect information, and often the condition requiring treatment is urgent or incapacitating so they can hardly shop around anyway. Plus the costs are so high that very few individuals can actually pay themselves, so they use insurance or state schemes - which then means that the consumer is not the actual customer, and competition aligned to the latter may not work in the benefit of the former, so choice gets limited or directed further... Thinking about it, healthcare is probably one of the least suitable services to be run on market means! LOL.