Profit seeking destroys markets with large externalities or where utility isn't readily discernable at low relative cost, and where for either or both of those reasons the rational choice model doesn't reasonably approximate actual behavior in the market.
Lots of real goods don't face that problem, but healthcare definitely does.
Whats the externality of providing healthcare, and in regards to the diffuseness of utility, food has the same problem and its a relatively very efficient market.
> in regards to the diffuseness of utility, food has the same problem and its a relatively very efficient market.
Food is a frequently repeated purchase with significant immediately-apparent utility and disutility, and so discovery of utilities is quick and the market reasonably efficient in terms of immediate utilities. (There are long-term utilities and disutilities that are less immediately experienced with consumption, and the food market is hardly efficient in terms of those.)
Healthcare products are infrequently purchased, and the relative utilities of different options are far from apparent. It's not at all similar to the aspects of the food market that can reasonably be described as relatively efficient.
I would argue that food escapes its measure of utility because otherwise, we would all be eating only the cheapest and healthiest option all the time, but our constant hunger also makes us purchase things against our long term interest. If so, you would expect the market to be really inefficient, but at least in terms of satisfying demand, its very hard to make money producing food.
Its true healthcare has less frequency so you cant be a sophisticated consumer: but its more frequent than a car, which is also a necessity in many cases, and the lack of sophistry does not make it an inefficient market.
Im not even sure healthcare is a special market, certainly not for infrequency, or because you must pay with your life (i.e. that you make a decision of life and death for resources). Not for restrictive application of labor (lawyers have that), not for the high costs of technology in its application (consumer tech? space exploration?).
I think at this point what makes the healthcare market unique is the common belief of the people that it is unique. It forces the consumer to consciously think of the cost of life, a question we are somehow bred all our lives to hate to ask, but that we answer every day unconsciously.
> I would argue that food escapes its measure of utility because otherwise, we would all be eating only the cheapest and healthiest option all the time
Economic utility is subjective; while it includes health effects, to be sure, it also includes things like the taste and other enjoyment factors. It absolutely is not the case that, were food a perfect example of rational choice, we would only be buying options that cost-effectively optimized healthiness.
> Its true healthcare has less frequency so you cant be a sophisticated consumer: but its more frequent than a car
“Healthcare” is a broad class of different products and services, many of which are far less frequently purchased than autos (if you buy open heart surgery more often than you buy a car, you are way out in a tail of frequency-of-purchase distribution of at least one of those items.)
OTOH, cars are also a market in which purchasers take a number of steps to counteract the low frequency. No one is test driving a variety of different surgerical interventions before choosing one.
> Economic utility is subjective; while it includes health effects, to be sure, it also includes things like the taste and other enjoyment factors. It absolutely is not the case that, were food a perfect example of rational choice, we would only be buying options that cost-effectively optimized healthiness.
Sure, I agree completely, but at least nominally the argument that healthcare is unique because its a necessity and it has irrational behaving actors is not qualitatively different than the food market.
> “Healthcare” is a broad class of different products and services, many of which are far less frequently purchased than autos (if you buy open heart surgery more often than you buy a car, you are way out in a tail of frequency-of-purchase distribution of at least one of those items.)
Thats as practical a segregation as saying that the people that buy the same model of a car the same year and with the same gas price tends to be 1 at most, hence almost no car purchases are ever repeated!
> OTOH, cars are also a market in which purchasers take a number of steps to counteract the low frequency. No one is test driving a variety of different surgerical interventions before choosing one.
Not really qualitative differences, just quantitative. Many car purchases are done without test drives (argentina doesnt do test drives often for example).
But again, even if you find some truly unique property of healthcare, which in this debate i don't recognize yet, i dont know how it will show that it should be private but public.
> Sure, I agree completely, but at least nominally the argument that healthcare is unique because its a necessity and it has irrational behaving actors is not qualitatively different than the food market.
“Necessity” wasn't part of the argument, and the argument wasn't really of a qualitative difference so much as them being different degrees of the same issues (food is considerably regulated—even by the same agency involved in much healthcare regulation in the US—for many of the same reasons, though the degree of deviation from ideal market conditions is lesser than for healthcare.)
Lots of real goods don't face that problem, but healthcare definitely does.