Clearly marked prices on private-sector cash-payment surgeries are a great thing. In fact, the competition of for-profit surgery centers drives down prices at more "traditional" (i.e., highly bureaucratized) hospitals.
Proponents of socialized medicine assert that markets cannot be trusted with healthcare due to "market failure." But the assumed "failures" of health markets are not improved by socializing healthcare.
Politicians are very proud when they can say a proposed program is "paid for." But this only means they've identified their intended victims ahead of time. Naming who will be plundered does not justify plunder.
Medicare and Medicaid ended up destroying the finest healthcare system in history, and the healthcare crisis has become a permanent part of American life.
In a sense, it is hardly surprising that so little attention has been paid to scandals within universal healthcare systems given the histories of underperformance, scandal, and perpetual crisis associated with many such systems.
Here we see two rival strategies to marketing healthcare services. The status quo is based on insurance payments and price secrecy. Walmart's strategy is based on price competition.
Many of the worst costs that will come with "Medicare for All" won't be calculated in dollars. They'll come in the form of doctor shortages, long wait times, and less access to care.
The Time magazine article creating "the gateway drug" myth in the 1970s provided no citations for its claims, except ambiguous references to unnamed “experts.” The evidence remains elusive 40 years later.
