One of the fundamental problems in all the debate over health care reform is that health care is not, nor should it be, a system. Health care is a massively government-distorted market, or bunch of markets (insurance, primary care, surgery, hospitalization, maternity care, alternative medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc).
We don’t look to reform the pencil system, the clothes system, the publishing system, the car system, the food system, or even the housing system. While the government offers assistance toward the purchase of some goods, government owns a car company, and government regulators set rules on what you can purchase, there is a general recognition that these are private decisions made in competitive markets.
I vow to stop complaining about the problems with our health care system and instead focus on the distortions in the health care market that make it difficult to act on price and quality information. As I’ve noted before, North Carolina’s attempt to reform the state mental health care system crashed against the rocks in part because it separated payment and care decisions.
