Birthing--where capitalism and healthcare fail

Pure capitalism is most simply described microeconomically as being driven by marginal revenue/cost and macroeconomically as being driven by demand and supply.

If there is a great enough demand for a product or service, generally new providers of that product or service will enter the market. Prices are determined by supply and demand, which has a degree of predictability. Markets operate best with 'perfect' information. There is no such thing in reality, but this phrase generally describes the idea that the more all parties know, the more efficient the market operates, and the better off all parties are. There may be localized and temporal losers. However, as long as free markets are allowed to operate, the losers are not institutionalized and will eventually benefit from the open markets. Also markets in which the participants are allowed to succeed and fail of their own genesis generally will be most efficient, as long as the players have a balance of power amongst themselves and are not impeded.

But medicine provides some challenges. Markets are collapsed. Instead of markets being allowed to operate free of other markets, markets are legislatively chained to other markets, causing huge inefficiencies. If it does not make sense that I would have to buy a tie because and when I am selling a weed-wacker, why does it make sense to have to buy health insurance when I am selling my labor services through taking a job? Further, the health insurance has an incentive not to cover you, but to have you pay as high a premium as is possible. Then you have a medical devices and pharma industry that pays doctors--through golf, trips to vegas, gifts, etc.--to have them proscribe their gear so as a consumer you must buy their gear. You buy and you never know the price. And it is always going to be expensive because the medical devices and pharma industry want you to buy the new expensive shit they just made at considerable expense, even though the old cheap stuff may work as well or better.

As evidence, look at how we, as the US, basically suck medically at our first experience of life: birth.

We are #28 in infant mortality, tied with Poland and Slovakia. However, we spend twice as much on birth as everyone else.

Most bankruptcies in the US are tied to a medical incident. Due to a job change and a change of providers by the job, I have been covered under 3 insurance providers over the last 16 months, and will change at least once--maybe twice--more over the next 4 months.

Bottomline here is that if we are spending twice as much as other countries on birth, but only get half the results, there is something not working with the markets for buying and selling healthcare.

None who really understand what Adam Smith really meant by 'free markets' would argue that our healthcare market is operating efficiently. However, powerful lobbiests representing doctors, insurance companies, and trial lawyers might.