What you won't hear from "Free Market"[sic] opponents of health care

Dean Baker (again):

We pay $250 billion a year for drugs that would sell in a free market for about $25 billion a year because the government gives drug companies patent monopolies. Patent monopolies are also the reason that expensive diagnostic tests are expensive.

In addition, our doctors get paid about twice as much as doctors in West Europe and Canada, even though most of the rest of us get paid less than our counterparts, because the United States has protectionist barriers that limit the number of qualified foreign doctors who can practice medicine in the United States.

In other words, Ms. Parker may have missed it, but the current health care system has about as much to do with a free market as the Soviet Union.

Posted via email from Jim Nichols