Crows

This post was inspired by one of Mike Munger's recent TAITC episodes . The big issues with spiraling health care costs in the US are (a) that the market has been distorted (mostly by regulation and cartel behavior) into a completely perverse state where normal price signals and competition are broken; and (b) that there's no single payer central planner dictating prices to keep them as low as they can be without driving every worker out of the medical field. (The latter is only a "solution" in one sense, in that it optimizes for price over every other consideration; see my last paragraph below.) Fundamentally, there is no reason why health care should be any different from any other market, like for TVs or cars or landscaping or home furnishings, where buyers and sellers collectively negotiate prices for various goods and services. (Witness the low and very public prices for Lasik and other completely elective procedures not covered by insurance.) Unfortunately, every...