Inefficiency of Free Market Based Health Care

How markets fail at efficiently allocating resources in the health care sector, leading to high costs and poor health outcomes.

A third of American health care expenditure is spent on unnecessary health care. People may think this is harmless, because people tend to think of health care as a good thing. Thus more of a good thing cannot be bad now can it?

However a lot of health care involves dangerous medication and risky medical procedures which one would not want to do unless absolutely necessary. One example is opioids. Unless you really need them, you don’t want to take them. That is the problem with markets and business driven by profit. One isn’t seeking just the right amount of something. One is seeking maximum profit. That is how you got overuse of opioids leading to an absolute health care disaster.

This is of course just top of the over-treatment iceberg:

As of a 2018 review evidence of overtreatment overmedicalization, and overdiagnosis in Pediatrics have been use of commercial rehydration solution, antidepressants, and…