Should the health care system maintain the current private marketplace?
There is widespread belief that the competition within an open marketplace encourages both efficiency and innovation. Central planning often fails to recognize and accommodate to local differences, leading to a “one-size-fits-all” approach that might not serve many populations well. Advocates for maintaining the private marketplace believe that this system has encouraged rapid technological advances in medicine as well as much pharmaceutical research and development. Concerns have been raised that a governmental program will bring inferior medicine with under-funded hospitals; denial of high-cost care to patients; and delays in introducing advanced, life-saving technology into practice. Supporters of a multipayer, private health care system also believe that the marketplace will be more effective at forcing the health care system to become more efficient and reduce unnecessary (and perhaps harmful) spending than a federal or federal-state governmental system will be. Many in the busine