Adam Smith Institute

Actually, this is how it's done in the U.S. and it's a complete failure. Dentists charge huge amounts of money to people with insurance and deep-pockets. Unfortunately, half of all Americans don't have dental insurance and 80% of dentists refuse to treat those with governmen-subsidized insurance given to low-income Americans. The result, cavity rates that are worse than third world countries in our low-income populations, hospitals inundated with dental emergencies and people dying from untreated tooth decay as well as thousands if not millions living in constant dental pain.

Organized dentistry makes sure the number of dentists remains lower than it should be and them lobby extensively against any viable group threatening to infringe on their lucrative monopoly. US dentists believe they did it on their own. But most are products of a public school education. Their dental schools and dental school tuition is subsidized by governments and corporations which profit from tooth decay. Their licenses are doled out by governments and the dental boards regulating their profession is government run.

One thing is sure, you can't trust dentistry to do what's right for the people. They need to be mandated to treat people just as they mandate fluoridated water because they want you to believe they "care" soooo much for the underprivileged. Yeah, right!

Compare and contrast with opticians, an example of where the private sector provides good, cost effective care in the interests of the patient.

Publisher Comments:
Why is medical care in the United States so expensive? For decades, Americans have taken it as a matter of faith that we spend more because we have the best health care system in the world. But as costs levitate, that argument becomes more difficult to make. Today, we spend twice as much as Japan on health care—yet few would argue that our health care system is twice as good.

Instead, startling new evidence suggests that one out of every three of our health care dollars is squandered on unnecessary or redundant tests; unproven, sometimes unwanted procedures; and overpriced drugs and devices that, too often, are no better than the less expensive products they have replaced.

How did this happen? In Money-Driven Medicine, Maggie Mahar takes the reader behind the scenes of a $2 trillion industry to witness how billions of dollars are wasted in a Hobbesian marketplace that pits the industry's players against each other. In remarkably candid interviews, doctors, hospital administrators, patients, health care economists, corporate executives, and Wall Street analysts describe a war of "all against all" that can turn physicians, hospitals, insurers, drugmakers, and device makers into blood rivals. Rather than collaborating, doctors and hospitals compete. Rather than sharing knowledge, drugmakers and device makers divide value. Rather than thinking about long-term collective goals, the imperatives of an impatient marketplace force health care providers to focus on short-term fiscal imperatives. And so investments in untested bleeding-edge medical technologies crowd out investments in information technology that might, in the long run, not only reduce errors but contain costs.

In theory, free market competition should tame health care inflation. In fact, Mahar demonstrates, when it comes to medicine, the traditional laws of supply and demand do not apply. Normally, when supply expands, prices fall. But in the health care industry, as the number and variety of drugs, devices, and treatments multiplies, demand rises to absorb the excess, and prices climb. Meanwhile, the perverse incentives of a fee-for-service system reward health care providers for doing more, not less.

In this superbly written book, Mahar shows why doctors must take responsibility for the future of our health care industry. Today, she observes, "physicians have been stripped of their standing as professionals: Insurers address them as vendors ('Dear Health Care Provider'), drugmakers and device makers see them as customers (someone you might take to lunch or a strip club), while . . . consumers (aka patients) are encouraged to see their doctors as overpaid retailers. . . . Before patients can reclaim their rightful place as the center—and indeed as the raison d'être—of our health care system," Mahar suggests, "we must once again empower doctors . . . to practice patient-centered medicine—based not on corporate imperatives, doctors' druthers, or even patients' demands," but on the best scientific research available.

Book News Annotation:
Health care costs in the United States are far higher than most other comparable countries, yet the health care system remains "staggeringly inefficient," in the words financial journalist Mahar. Based on interviews with physicians, patients, hospital administrators, policy makers, researchers, insurers, drug makers, device makers, corporate executives, and other insiders, her work investigates how health care dollars are allocated and whether they are used wisely. In the end, she concludes that the problem is that having a money-driven system leads major inefficiencies and bad short term decisions at all levels of the system. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Synopsis:
From financial journalist Mahar, this sweeping portrait of the business of the healthcare industry over the last 20 years is filled with characters, gripping stories, and trenchant economic, political, and business insights.

back to top
About the Author
Maggie Mahar is the author of Bull! A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982�"2004, a book Paul Krugman of the New York Times said "makes a devastating case against the contention that the market is almost perfectly efficient." In his 2003 annual report, Warren Buffett recommended Bull! to Berkshire Hathaway's investors. Before becoming a financial journalist in 1982, when she began to write for Money magazine, Institutional Investor, the New York Times, Bloomberg, and Barron's, Mahar was an English professor at Yale University. She lives in New York City.