In this article, my good buddy, Winthrop Quigley, over at the Albuquerque Journal, repeatedly cites “market failure” as the reason for the ever-increasing role the federal government is taking on in health care. I’ll give Quigley a partial pass on this one because it seems like the speaker he is citing repeatedly used the term in his presentation.
Is health care really facing “market failure?” Defined, market failure describes a situation when the allocation of goods and services by a free market is not efficient.
As the following chart shows, the percentage of health care costs borne by those who actually use the service is down to 12 percent (and shrinking):
That alone causes US health care to defy the adjective “free market.” Without even touching ObamaCare, let’s talk about the tort issue, the Food and Drug Administration, medical licensing, and the lack of an interstate market for health insurance.
These are just a few items that make the term “market failure” void when applied to US health care. It would have been nice had Quigley challenged the use of the term or at least not repeated it. And, of course, ObamaCare only takes us several steps further away from anything resembling a “free market.”
Unfortunately Winthrop Quigley and Charles Milligan do not understand “free market,” with Mark Twain’s quote “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.” yelling out.
I have no doubt Quigley is a well meaning journalist, but has not a clue of basic economic concepts except Keynesian economic, which teaches government control is best. But, Keynesian is but one of several schools of economic thought.
An appropriate description of the U.S. healthcare and over-regulation of virtually all industry(s) is, by definition, “fascism” which, by definition, is autocratic (government) control of non-government resources.
It astounds me that the vast majority of what is called the “lame-stream” media by some, has no concept of what a free market is. unfortunately, Mark Twain’s quote is common to knowledgeable of what a free market is.
I fail to understand why the preponderance of business journalists have not read a simple primer such as “Economics in One Lesson” by Hazlitt so they can understand what they are writing about.
Why Keynesian economics is virtually pervasive in academia, thus assuming that is the only economic thought and although proven to be flawed, it has become the basis of the U.S. autocratic bureaucracy.
You have it exactly right — it is astounding to observe the ignorance of the pundits.