Health Care Reform

To all you Free-Marketers out there who want to rely on unfettered capitalism to reform the U.S. health care system: IT WON"T WORK! Why? Because heath care is relatively immune to the usual marketplace forces of competition/supply-and-demand. Why? Because in health care, the provider (doctor), not the consumer (patient), actually creates much of the demand for his own services and even initiates the purchase orders. Only physicians admit to hospitals, order tests, perform surgeries, prescribe drugs, even determine return-visit frequency and intensity. That's one reason why, counterintuitively, areas with the highest physician densities (the most "competitive") often also have the highest physician incomes. Until this fundamental reality of health care economics is recognized and addressed, heath care costs will continue to soar.