Can the Free Market Fix Health Care? Listen to Michael Cannon vs. Jonathan Cohn at the Soho Forum (Reason Podcast)
A live debate at the Soho Forum in New York City.
"The U.S. [health care system] is what you get when you let government run rampant," says Michael F. Cannon, who's the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. "The government controls half of our health care spending directly and the other half indirectly." He elaborated:
The government tightly controls who can practice medicine, what education they must have, what tasks they can perform, where they can practice medicine, who can open a medical facility, who can purchase expensive medical equipment, where we can purchase our medical insurance, what our insurance covers, the prices we pay for insurance, how we obtain health care in retirement, what treatments doctors can describe, what manufacturers can say about those treatments and their products, the organization structure of health care providers, how health providers get paid, how much they get paid, how much we spend on health care, [and] how we help the poor obtain health care.
Would Americans be better off if the government pulled back and let markets function? That was the topic of a debate held Monday night at the Soho Forum, a monthly Oxford-style debate series that "features topics of special interest to libertarians" and "aims to enhance social and professional ties within the New York City libertarian community." (An archive of past Soho Forum events.)
Cannon's debating partner was The Huffington Post's Jonathan Cohn, author of the 2007 book, Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis—and the People Who Pay the Price.
Cohn and Cannon debated the following resolution: "A market system for medical care would save more people from suffering inadequate care than any other system." At the beginning of the event, attendees voted "yes," "no," or "undecided." After Cannon and Cohn had their say, the audience voted again.
Cohn won the debate, convincing two percent of "yes" votes and 16 percent of the undecideds to switch to his side. The results are here.
Listen to the debate on SoundCloud below. Better yet, subscribe to the Reason podcast at iTunes.
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