Blog post #4
King Henderson
PS 101
Professor Jenkins
April 28, 2022
Private vs. Public sector – Blog post 4
In the economic world, healthcare is what is considered a “merit good”. This is because it not only brings value to the consumer but also others. So, because healthcare is considered a merit good people look at it as only a societal gain; but forget its impact on the individual, thus undervaluing it. But some economists feel healthcare issues should be left untouched, as they will work themselves out. This economic principle is described as the “Invisible Hand Theory”. In a privatized healthcare system, the consumers, and forces at be cause the supply and the demand. Many believe it should be left this way, but is it the right choice?
The United States healthcare debate mostly centers around Medicaid and Medicare. With these policies taking everyone’s attention, there is little effort expressed towards finding alternatives. A third option, which is Incremental healthcare. It establishes a normalized check-up routine with a healthy doctor patient relationship. It is stated that incremental healthcare leads to lower mortality rates, lower spending costs, and better treatments for chronic diseases. All of these improvements listed are what describe emergency cares weak points.
In a privatized healthcare, emergency care is most important. It is the kind of healthcare system that deals with problems quickly, thus producing fast/visible outcomes. To some people, this form of healthcare seems somewhat short sighted. So, you might ask, “why isn’t incremental healthcare implemented”? This is simply because people don’t know they have a choice. More times than not conformity occurs, leaving people seemingly without options, when in reality this is not true. So, because of society/conformity, healthcare is still shifting towards an emergency-based healthcare system instead of incremental. In short, allocating more funds towards incremental care would, if not anything else, improve the longevity and efficiency of our healthcare system.
If privatization doesn’t work, what about nationalization? If you look around the world to look at nationalized healthcare systems, some are not faring well. In the UK, their National Health Service (NHS) is what is described as, “a black hole of funding.” This is because nationalized healthcare services pull from the government as well as its people. The UK spends so much money on healthcare that it takes up 9.1% of its GDP. What makes this worse is that not only is it crazy expensive, but the quality of service is incredibly poor. This is due to the lack of incentives that the system provides for healthcare workers. Nationalized healthcare means there is no incentive for free-market entities to provide better quality.
Maybe if both private and national systems have their downfalls, why not combine them?
In doing so, this would create a private-public healthcare system. This might seem to obvious to have any validity but its true. Countries around the world do have successful public-private systems: a good example being France. France has a unique healthcare system in which it provides arguably the best healthcare in the world; and this is because its incredible dual system. But, keeping in mind, the French pay exponentially more in taxes than we do. So, in conclusion, in a privatized healthcare there in truly more to be discovered and experimented with. While on the other hand you have private-public healthcare which only seems achievable through high taxation. Each option is appealing, but which yields the best results?