FREE THE ENTREPRENEUR

In normal markets, entrepreneurs in search of profit often spur cost efficiencies and quality improvements. Under Medicare, by contrast, entrepreneurial efforts find their greatest reward when they exploit the system rather than improve it.

Entrepreneurs are creating new products to fill needs that traditional health insurance does not meet. For example:

• People can purchase blood tests via the Internet and get results in 24 hours.
• They can get low-cost care with very little waiting at walk-in clinics in shopping malls.

Yet these services are often hampered by outmoded, unnecessary government regulations. Amazingly, doctors are prohibited from owning and operating walk-in clinics that refer patients to their regular practices!

As a regulator of care, government has erected many obstacles. For example:

• It is illegal for a doctor practicing on the Texas side of Texarkana to treat a patient by phone on the Arkansas side of the same city.
• It is illegal for a doctor practicing in East St. Louis (Illinois side) to interpret x-rays taken for a patient treated in west St. Louis (Missouri side).

The solution is to deregulate the Supply Side.

Most importantly of all, a national market for provider services should be established quickly, and the protectionist practice prohibiting interstate insurance providers abolished .

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