Naming the cause of medicine's failures

The trouble with making government the solution for our medical system’s failures is that government is without a doubt the chief cause of those failures.

Several months ago Greg Blankenship, founder and president of the Illinois Policy Institute, gave us a good name for one governmental cause of health care failure. In a fascinating column, Blankenship looked at the regulations that beset planning for medical care in his state, Illinois, and gave it a name: Protectionism.

And, like nationwide protectionism, special-interest influences come to play as a matter of course, with one or two businesses reaping most of the rewards. Blankenship likened the practice to a (fictional) fast food restaurant regulatory board getting captured by McDonald’s. Suddenly, Burger King outlets can’t get permission to expand. Economists have been writing on this for 50 years or more. Regulatory capture, it’s called . . . but here applied to the business of medicine.

And medicine is a business. Calling it a “service” and pretending it’s like government doesn’t make it any less a business. It only helps run the business into the ground...

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