[Jason Vines]

Patrick Appel, filling in for Andrew Sullivan at Daily Dish, wonders:

Patrick Appel, on 12 August 2009 - 03:31 PM, said:

[consumer guides] to rank and review doctors it would be much easier to determine the best value and the best doctors. Yelp.com does this for restaurants. Amazon.com does this for merchandise. Why can't we mandate that insurance companies do this for health care?

I wrote him this in response:

Jason Vines, on 12 August 2009 - 04:37 PM, said:

This doesn't happen for health care because it is free market in name only. Consumers cannot meaningfully chose from multiple competing vendors; insurance companies, and employers by virtue of selecting which of these companies will cover employees, do this. Furthermore, the insulation insurance companies provide most consumers from the costs of treatment discourages consumers from making comparisons based on value for money.

The absence in the health care sector of true competition for customers and scrutiny of prices both explains the astronomical medical costs in the United States and the lack of consumer guides. Because of government interference in health care that has landed us in the mess we're in, few incentives exist to discover ways of keeping satisfaction high while reducing costs or to help consumers make informed decisions.

Almost no other industry suffers these problems because they have millions of customers freely making choices and assessing prices, while serving as markets for guides to help them do so.