Thanks to the generous support of Joe and Tracy Matarese, attendees heard a series of talks that dug into the root causes of America’s healthcare crisis.
There is little disagreement that the American healthcare system is broken. But the standard debate over healthcare is built on a false choice between the dysfunctional status quo and even more government control. In New Hampshire, our speakers challenged that framing directly. America’s healthcare system is not failing because of a lack of government. It is failing because market forces have been buried under decades of subsidies, regulations, licensing restrictions, and political favoritism.
Mises Institute Editor in Chief Ryan McMaken opened the event with “American Healthcare Is Socialist Healthcare.” He argued that it is simply wrong to describe the American healthcare system as a mostly private market. The federal government already dominates healthcare spending, and its influence shapes the rest of the industry. The task for those who want real reform is not to focus on preserving the few isolated market-friendly aspects of the current system, but to build a radically different one.
Mises Institute Senior Associate Editor Dr. Timothy Terrell followed with “The Rise of State-Controlled Medical Care.” Looking back to the formation of the American Medical Association and the Flexner Report, Terrell explained how organized medicine used government power to restrict the supply of doctors in order to raise the prices providers could fetch for care. Though it was presented as a campaign to improve quality, the rise of state-controlled medicine was really a successful cartelization effort.
Charles Sauer then gave the featured lecture, “Why Is the Healthcare System Broken?” Sauer focused on the entrepreneurs who are already proving that a better system is possible. From the Surgery Center of Oklahoma to direct primary care and other cashbased models, he showed how transparent prices and competition are already delivering cheaper, better care in an industry long insulated from normal market forces.
Mises Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Robert Murphy closed the talks with “How to Fix the Economics of Healthcare.” Murphy emphasized that the most absurd features of American healthcare—especially the impossibility of knowing the price of treatment before receiving it—would be unthinkable in a real market. He also detailed how institutions like the FDA and the tax-favored employer insurance system distort how healthcare is paid for, further restrict supply, and therefore help drive costs even higher.
The event concluded with a panel discussion in which the speakers addressed questions from the audience. The panel discussed the motivations behind the government’s interventions in healthcare, the changes made by the Trump administration, what can be done to fix the industry, and more.
America’s healthcare system is not broken because markets failed. It is broken because politicians, bureaucrats, and cartelized interests have regulated the market to construct a warped industry that benefits them at the expense of patients. As our speakers made clear in New Hampshire, the cure is not yet another dose of government control. It is to restore the price signals, competition, and entrepreneurial freedom that make high-quality and affordable healthcare possible.
