by Guest: ”Lamp”, CAN
March 29, 2024

It is a common belief that healthcare is something that must be fully funded by the state with the use of taxpayer dollars in order for the most vulnerable members of society, namely the homeless and disabled, to be able to access such life-saving services. With that knowledge in mind, one can understand why privately owned institutions that provide health services with the intention of wealth creation are looked upon with distrust. Common examples of countries whose governments publicly fund healthcare include Canada, in opposition to the US, which has neither free nor universal healthcare. Contrary to the belief that privately funded healthcare leads to worse outcomes, economic history and present studies of the workings of the healthcare industry show this to be implicitly false. There exist three such points in favor of the private funding of healthcare, those being government regulation stifling the private market, the comparatively low quality of publicly funded healthcare, and the existence of effective forms of private healthcare in the present day from which we can use as models.

source: The Economist

Though the American healthcare market is criticized worldwide for being inequitable, leaving many poor families in debt while trying to pay for pharmaceutical and surgery bills in a country where childhood obesity and health problems run rampant, this is not a result of the private market but rather, a market regulated by a central authority.
While services in America are mainly private, the ways in which doctors are allowed to operate on their patients are more similar to a command system by which organizations such as Medicare force doctors to employ billing codes that restrict the ways they can provide services (”How Government Killed the Medical Profession,” 2013). When doctors do offer alternative forms of payment for the uninsured and those who seek low-cost healthcare outside of government and employer-issued health insurance, they risk breaking state-enforced insurance regulations. Take the example of New York doctor John Muney who offered his customers a monthly plan of $79 accounting for unlimited office visits, along with minor forms of surgery, physicals, and a variety of other services until he was prevented from doing so by the state insurance department (”NY doctor offers flat-rate care for uninsured,” 2009). Not forgetting conventions such as FDA-imposed price controls on drug manufacturers and patents on specific products that make it costly to manufacture, distribute, and import cheaper variants of drugs such as insulin without being taxed heavily or sued by larger, more established firms (”A Government Guide to Keeping Insulin Unaffordable: 3 Easy Steps to Hogtie a Market,” 2019). The universal/single-payer system, on the other hand, is even worse. The Canadian model, for example, though regarded as a prime example of this system and the most equitable in the modern world, is also one of the most inefficient and wasteful. As a whole, Canada suffers from a lack of equipment, with 6.2 MRI units and 12 CT scanners per million people in opposition to Americans having access to 26.5 MRI units and 33.9 CT scanners per million people in 2006 (”The Hidden Costs of Single-Payer Health Insurance: A Comparison of the United States and Canada,” 2008). Closer to the present day it is known that 2.9 beds per 1000 people and 1/4 of Canadians waiting 4 or more months for elective surgery is one such issue (”When do we admit Canada’s health care system just isn’t working?” 2022).
This is especially troubling when one considers that Canada spends 10.6% of its GDP on healthcare services at $6666 per person and $300 billion in the last year (”Record spending: Canada expected to dole out more than $300B on health care in 2021,” 2021). When assessing the situation, government-originated single-payer systems are simply not sustainable or capable of allocating resources effectively and efficiently in a way that treats their clients as people with individual needs. Knowing the existing restrictions caused by government intervention in the healthcare system, it might be considered impractical to move to a fully privatized system due to the lack of real, working examples of privately funded healthcare. Thus one may seek a middle-of-the-road solution in the mixed healthcare systems of the Netherlands and Singapore. However, there remain credible and enduring examples of low-cost, market-based healthcare in the past and present day. 
Prior to the nationalization and regulation of healthcare across the bulk of the developed world there existed many mutual aid societies that sprang up across Britain and the United States and offered checkups at the price of an average blue-collar worker’s daily wage, competing only by churches as the main form of charity for the needy (”From Mutual Aid to Welfare State: How Fraternal Societies Fought Poverty and Taught Character,” 2000). This took place until federal authorities crowded them out. Today, in the American states where healthcare regulation is relatively relaxed there exist forms of Direct Payer Care by which patients can receive direct access to their family doctor at a price of $74 a month (”Why Patients Should Consider Direct Primary Care (DPC),” 1994). As of late, there have also been moves to implement systems of crowdfunding such as the up and coming ”CrowdHealth” through which community members crowdfund services over $500 for their fellow members. This is especially helpful for preventing the accumulation of debt resulting from multiple surgeries or emergency visits and offers monthly subscription plans of $325 for adults ages 55-64 in opposition to the average cost of monthly health insurance at $541 (”Average Cost of Health Insurance (2022),” 2022). 

When contrasting the benefits and positives of public and private funding of healthcare, it remains clear that it is the implementation and expansion of market-based alternatives coupled with deregulation that result in the most equitable results for the users and has done so in the past. The history of healthcare funding is a testament to the belief in the rational self-interest of individual actors and the ability of a myriad of entrepreneurs working within a market to fit their lifestyles and salaries. Knowing this, we cannot trust third-party actors such as government employees who claim to work in the public interest in deference to profits while both restricting the ways in which the people can purchase market-originated goods and services while also forcing citizens to pay for and fund government healthcare services that they may not need.

Bibliography:

Cato. (2013, May 3). How Government Killed the Medical Profession. Retrieved from https://www.cato.org/commentary/how-government-killed-medical-profession
Reuters. (2009, May 7). NY doctor offers flat-rate care for uninsured. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/health-usa-newyork-idUKN0739070020090507
(2019, March 25). A Government Guide to Keeping Insulin Unaffordable: 3 Easy Steps to Hogtie a Market. Retrieved from https://fee.org/articles/a-government-guide-to-keeping-insulin-unaffordable-3-easy-steps-on-how-to-hogtie-a-market/
Fraser Institute. (2008, September). The Hidden Costs of Single Payer Health Insurance: A Comparison of the United States and Canada. Retrieved from https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/HiddenCostsSinglePayer.pdf
The Globe and Mail. (2022, January 5). When do we admit Canada’s health care system just isn’t working? Retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-when-do-we-admit-canadas-health-car%20e-system-just-isnt-working/CTV/
(2021, November 4). Record spending: Canada expected to dole out more than $300B on health care in 2021. Retrieved from https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/record-spending-canada-expected-to-dole-out-more-than300b-on-health-care-in-2021-1.5651634#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20data,cent%20of%20the%20country’s%20GDP.
Heritage Foundation. (2000, July 27) From Mutual Aid to Welfare State: How Fraternal Societies Fought Poverty and Taught Character. Retrieved from https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/mutual-aid-welfare-state-how-fraternalsocieties-fought-poverty-and-taught
Forbes. (2021, October 28). Why Patients Should Consider Direct Primary Care (DPC). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2021/10/28/why-patients-should-consider-directprimary-care-dpc/?sh=62aa6d318446
ValuePenguin. (2022, Feb 15). Average Cost of Health Insurance (2022). Retrieved from https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-health-insurance