Friday, May 1, 2009

health care is a social function


Matthew Yglesias

Obviously, it’s not as if epidemics wouldn’t take place if we had comprehensive health care reform. But people being unable to go see their doctor for economic reasons doesn’t help; nor does the lack of sick days faced by many workers.

More broadly, the epidemic serves a reminder that the health care system is in many ways a public function. Free markets work very well for ordinary consumption goods, but Tamiflu is not an ordinary consumption good. It’s important to be able to direct the health care delivery system’s resources toward public purposes and not have the resources allocated purely by market demand.

We need health care reform. We need a choice when it comes to our health and those of our families.

For more on how you can help bring about this change join me in standing with Dr. Dean. So that we can assure that individual Americans can choose either a universally available public healthcare option like Medicare or for-profit private insurance.  A public health care option brings competition into the marketplace without it we will continue to pay 2 to 3 times as much for health care as other industrialized nations (while leaving large chunks of our population without coverage a.k.a "rationing" via income). 

Posted via web from jimnichols's posterous

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