"Healthcare Marketization" Could End the Crisis

This is from Carpe Diem.

"Some key paragraphs from the editorial "Private enterprise fix could save healthcare":

"Does America have a “grocery system”? An “automobile system?” A “tourism system”? The nation does, of course, have a “healthcare system” and the fact that the medical-services sector can’t be described as a market… well, it’s the prime cause of the “healthcare crisis.”

Consumers make choices about employment, food, housing, clothing, transportation, investment, and leisure peddled by an uncountable — and ever-changing — number of vendors. Price, convenience, and quality vary. Transparency is standard. Accountability is enforced, at times rapidly and ruthlessly, by both sellers and buyers. Yet satisfying the nation’s healthcare needs involves an appalling supply of waste, waiting, bureaucracy, and buck-passing.

Consumer-driven medical services, if fused with health savings accounts that insure against catastrophic conditions, would revolutionize the way physicians and hospitals — gulp — “do business.” Savings would be substantial. The “crisis” would quickly end."