A New Mexico-based Academic Gets it Right on Health Care

Professor Allen Parkman is a Professor of Management at University of New Mexico. In a recently-published opinion piece that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal, he explains in simple, clear detail, why health care costs have spiraled out of control over the years. As he puts it with regards to Obama’s proposed reform of our health care sector, “History suggests that any cost reductions will be hard to obtain and expanded coverage will be very expensive.”
Parkman rightly points to the tax treatment of health care and how it influences consumer behavior as the single most-important flaw with America’s health care system:

On closer scrutiny, the problems with this industry should be viewed differently, as purchases of health care are often inefficient with unnecessary transaction costs. Let me explain. They can be inefficient because consumers are not exposed to the true cost of the services they are receiving and, consequently, the benefits may not justify the costs. In addition, there are unnecessary costs associated with each transaction. In contrast to a simple credit card purchase at a grocery store, health care expenses covered by insurance require additional paperwork for the provider and then administrative scrutiny from the insurance company.
Both of these problems exist because of the inappropriate use of insurance with regard to health care. Normally, we buy insurance to convert uncertainty into certainty. For example, we pay a predictable premium for fire insurance with the understanding that we will be reimbursed if our house burns down. We have converted an uncertain event (the burning of our house) into a predictable event (a premium and reimbursement if there is a fire). Fire insurance is fairly inexpensive — because it is seldom used.

As Parkman concludes, “With more realistic prices, some of the problems facing the working uninsured will be reduced. There still may be a role for the government providing catastrophic coverage for those individuals and families…real health care reform does not come from promising cost reductions and expanding coverage. It comes from making processes more efficient.”