Health Care BS

Quite a lot,  as it happens. John Goodman provides a good summary at his health policy blog: 

(1) We [i.e. state and federal governments] have systematically suppressed normal market forces.

(2) The entity that pays the bill is usually separate from the beneficiaries of the spending.

(3) Providers of the services see the payers, not the beneficiaries, as their real customers and often shape their practice to satisfy the payers’ demands — even if the beneficiaries are made worse off.

(4) Even though the providers and the payers are in a constant tug-of-war over what is to be paid for and how much, the beneficiaries are almost never part of these discussions.

Goodman’s fifth similarity inevitably follows from the first 4 (for anyone remotely literate in economics):

(5) There is rampant inefficiency on a scale not found in other markets.

So, what have we been given in lieu of reform by our “leaders” in Washington? ObamaCare—-a boondoggle that manages to exacerbate all of the above-described problems.

And yet there are people who actually believe that ObamaCare will somehow make our medical delivery system more efficient and, stop if you’ve heard this one, reduce the deficit.