Price transparency in medicine

Guess what happens when a single-payer system is unsatisfactory enough to allow a vibrant cash-only market to spring up next to it.

2 comments:

Grim said...

So do you need the NHS alongside it to make that work? It sounds like that's performing an important price-suppressing function by holding down demand (in cases where people would rather spend time than money).

douglas said...

Usually, businesses want more traffic, not less, and we usually say that competitors who are subsidized to create artificially low prices are 'unfairly subsidized'. Not sure it's really an advantage. The truly needy are still going to need public assistance, but that's nothing new. There may also be some loss of the efficiencies of volume with a narrower potential customer base.