Why Markets Are the Key to Quality, Coordinated Medical Care

The uninsured are not the only problem our health care sector faces; powerful forces suppress the quality of care for insured and uninsured alike. Notably, Americans receive dangerously uncoordinated medical care. Most approaches to improving health care coordination rely on government-imposed top-down reforms, yet this very approach has suppressed coordination and other innovations in health care delivery. In the recent Cato Institute Briefing Paper "Does the Doctor Need a Boss?," Arnold Kling and Michael F. Cannon explain that coordinated care requires free markets. They propose to let consumers control the money that purchases their health insurance and for policymakers to liberalize licensing laws--two steps that would enable consumers to pick health plans that coordinate rather than force consumers to sit and wait until policymakers finally get it right.