Readers React: The big American healthcare lie: It’s a free-market system
To the editor: The situation with UnitedHealth shows us the fundamental fallacy of healthcare in America: that it is a free consumer market and we should let it decide prices and levels of care. (“UnitedHealth may dump Obamacare plans, putting California expansion in doubt,” Nov. 19)
However, for there to be a free consumer market, consumers must have a choice. Without choice and the ability to reject a provider if the prices, products and services aren’t suitable, the consumer is in a captive market.
Healthcare isn’t a free market because people who are seriously ill or injured can’t reject healthcare. They are compelled to take one of the services available at the set price because rejecting care is practically impossible.
Because healthcare does not exist in a free market, prices should be stringently regulated for the common good. Ideally, because the health of “we the people” is fundamental to the common good of our nation, we should have a single national healthcare service for all.
Since we already have Medicare, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. All of us should become enrolled in Medicare.
John Rossmann, Tustin
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