“Free market” care a myth

Medical care in the U.S. hasn’t been a free market for more than half a century, when a country doctor was often paid in farm produce and the only well-to-do doctors were those who specialized in “diseases of the rich.” Since the advent of health insurance and “usual and customary fees,” the insured consumer has been divorced from the cost of his health care. Those who can’t afford insurance risk bankruptcy with every illness, while those who buy the ever more pricey insurance products inflate the prices.

Granted that all this largesse over the last 50 years has brought us a lot of stuff, joint replacement, etc., that give those of us who can afford it a better life. But now we are paying the price with gross access inequality. If the Republicans trash Obamacare in the name of the “free market,” they are worshipping at the altar of a false god.

There is no hint in the plans they’ve floated so far to suggest they have any hope of controlling prices, only making the system more opaque and further enriching the insurance companies that currently only exist to serve their shareholders.

Dale Damron

Spokane