More health care policy – you can’t have it all:

Our health-care system is pulled in different directions by competing objectives. For example, individual consumers would prefer to have health-care expenses covered for them, rather than worry about paying for health care. This is the objective of Insulation.

However, we are concerned with the rising share of resources devoted to health care. This is the objective of Affordability.

Finally, we do not like the idea of being denied health care because of a bureaucrat’s decision. This is the objective of Accessibility, because we want to be able to access whatever our doctor recommends.

These objectives conflict with one another. For example, managed care was an attempt to move toward Affordability, but it reduced Accessibility.

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