Free Market Health Care: Give Patients The Choice!

In the Industrial Age, information was scarce, expensive, institutionally-oriented, and designed for consumption. This certainly sounds like traditional health care to me. The antiquated gatekeeper model of care that accompanies it is built on paternalism, turf battles and legalized monopolies.

But the times are changing. Welcome to the Information Age, where information is abundant, cheap, personally-oriented, and designed for participation. It is a time when patients are more than capable of making informed decisions about not only their health care but their choice of provider as well.

Sadly, the health care system remains firmly rooted in the Industrial Age. It is time for health care to move into the Information Age, to catch up with patients and provide them with truly patient-centered care.

The Information Age is an era in which consumers collect their health care information online. In 2009, the Pew Research Center noted that 61% of American adults look online for health information. They reported that 60% found online information that affected a decision about how to treat an illness or condition. Patients now go online to read reviews of providers and services. They use social media to collect data from a wider scope of friends and followers. They are actively involved with sharing health and medical experiences amongst their peers.

Here’s the twist: just 3% of all adults say they or someone they know has been harmed by following medical advice or health information found on the internet. This percentage has remained stable since 2006. It becomes readily apparent that patients of the Information Age are now fully capable of making informed decisions about their health care and their provider of choice.

So let them do so.

Free market health care would allow patients to have “patient-centered care”. It would promote access. It would help to eliminate many of the paternalistic behaviors of the current system. But it will also require a drastic change in the current health care model. The current gatekeeper model promotes a legalized monopoly – which varies from state to state and profession to profession. Those who thrive in this model are quick to point out a need for legislative restrictions in order to promote “patient safety”. But the reality is that only 3% of people - that are using the Internet alone, without quality control and without any provider whatsoever -  have been harmed. With that said, how miniscule is the “safety” issue when they actually get to choose a provider to help mentor them in their “patient-centered” care?

The solution is simple. Allow the patient to have the right to choose their provider without arbitrary and antiquated legislative restrictions.

Imagine this: the good clinicians - the cream of the crop, the ones that work with patients to create positive outcomes - will rise to the top. The bad ones? They will sink to the bottom, much like any other profession or trade. It works throughout all other aspects of our market economy, so why not in patient-centered care?

A free market demands accountability from providers, and a need for them to bring their “A” game each and every day that they interact with patients. Demand for good quality providers will rise. Why should health care be allowed to promote mediocrity without penalty? But instead, special interests promote legislative barriers for inane issues like “patient safety” -  even when the medical liability data refutes the claim. It becomes an issue of turf battles, NOT the safety of the patient. Let me repeat that: it is not about the safety of the patient. But it sure does sound altruistic to law-makers, doesn’t it?

At this point in the history of health care in this country, a patient deserves to have the right to choose their provider freely based on their own self-selected rationale. In a country that is built on a foundation of free market economics, why limit a patient’s access to their provider of choice?

Let’s just do away with the legalized monopolization of health care, and let’s get back to business: the science of getting people better. Do it because it is right for the patient – the heart and soul of patient-centered care.

Photo credit: Grant MacDonald