Free up health care market

My column for the West Band Daily News is online.  It’s called, “Free up health care market.”  Here’s a little bit:

When health care decisions are made in the free market, all of the other normal market forces are brought to bear.

   For example, while the naive among us might like to believe that all of the remarkable new drugs and medical devices that keep us alive and improve our quality of life are created by altruistic nerds working at minimum wage in some laboratory, the fact is that they, like the rest of us, are motivated by the profit motive. These remarkable scientists and physicians earn a good living because the companies for which they work reap the profits off of their intellectual product. If there wasn’t any money to be made, the scientists and doctors would be out of work and the health care businesses would be in another line of work.

   Much as the socialists among us like to sneer at the profit motive, history proves that there has never been a more powerful and productive engine to the betterment of mankind.