Market Forces Cannot Regulate Health Care

You will forgive me if I repost something I wrote on another site in January of 2010, but it bears repeating.

One reason that it's impossible for the market to control the cost of health care is simple: there can be no fair market value for the service. That's right, Republicans, THERE CAN NEVER BE A FAIR MARKET VALUE FOR HEALTH CARE.

"That's just not true," say the free marketeers. "Fair market value would be set simply by doing away with any kind of socialized health care (some extremists even include private insurance in this) and making people pay attention to how much they pay for it."

But that's simply not true in this case because of the definition of fair market value: "The price agreed upon by a knowledgeable seller and a knowledgeable buyer when neither is compelled to the sale."

Except for routine checkups, where they buyer is not immediately compelled, you will NEVER have more than one of these three conditions: the knowledgeable seller. In most cases, the buyer is unknowledgeable, very much so relative to the seller, and is compelled to the sale. This means it's not just a seller's market but a robber's market made of unknowledgeable buyers (it takes YEARS of study to catch up) who are compelled to buy from increasingly savvy and well-organized sellers.