[afro-nets] Markets for Healthcare: the unending debate (5)

[Jeff Buderer <jeff@onevillage.biz>]

Markets for Healthcare: the unending debate (5)
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Hi Tarry,

I know everyone will flag the market failures in healthcare as I
had already noted in my submission. Can we really trust public
officials more than we can trust the private sector to deliver a
service that is equitable and efficient?

I think the real issue is not whether it is private or public
but rather whether the community is the focus of the health care
program and whether the development of the national health care
infrastructure is holistic and preventative in its orientation.

I think that is radical and expands the debate beyond the well
worn liberal verses of conservative arguments and towards a more
radical view that seeks to make the health professional respon-
sible for the long term health of the patient and not their own
job security and wealth enrichment.

May be you can let us know how well the 'school vouchers' in the
US have helped to getting schools to provide better education
service. School vouchers? I think the issue is too politicized
for us to get a clear answer as to whether it works. But it
seems like it would as people are going to put or cash their
vouchers into those schools that work.

The market in Healthcare is not limited to access to healthcare,
it involves other inputs as well. When there are more Ghanaian
Doctors in California than the whole of Ghana - what does that
tell you? People go to where the market is most ripe. Also it
drives home the realization that there is a huge medical as well
as digital divide.

Yet we might also consider the fundamentally unfair and unjust
economic structure that sustains such immensely distorted and I
would say blatantly unsustainable trends and realities.

Markets for healthcare is about choice, and once that choice is
not there, then I can not see any other rights that need to be
protected. I am not against the of a market based health care
system but rather I am against a corporate dominated health care
system about as much as I would be resistant to one controlled
by a central government. In the US we have a corporate dominated
system. In Europe they have a central government dominated sys-
tem. It seems pretty obvious to me that neither one really is
working very well right now.


Jeff Buderer
mailto:jeff@onevillage.biz