People who clamor for a nationalized, taxpayer-funded health care system might think twice after reading Virginia Postrel?s latest article in The Atlantic. Postrel explains how her high-cost battle with cancer might have had a much different result under such a ?universal health care? system. She notes:
Looking at the crazy-quilt American system, you might imagine that someone somewhere has figured out how to deliver the best possible health care to everyone, at no charge to patients and minimal cost to the insurer or the public treasury. But nobody has. In a public system, trade-offs don?t go away; if anything, they get harder.
The good thing about a decentralized, largely private system like ours is that health care constantly gets weighed against everything else in the economy. No single authority has to decide whether 15 percent or 20 percent or 25 percent is the ?right? amount of GDP to spend on health care, just as no single authority has to decide how much to spend on food or clothing or entertainment. Different individuals and organizations can make different trade-offs. Centralized systems, by contrast, have one health budget. This treatment gets funded, and that one doesn?t.
Those seeking an alternative that would improve the current system ought to consider consumer-driven health care.
