Regarding Dale Quale’s Thursday letter to the editor in the Las Vegas Sun, headlined “Health care, private sector are mismatched”:
Mr. Quale writes, “Now it’s time to decide whether delivery of timely and medically necessary health care is best left to private insurance companies or should be added to the list of government-delivered services to which every American is entitled.” In every service mentioned, from the U.S. Postal Service to public schools, the private sector produces a more effective and efficient business model in the same activity.
Government-run services are prone to go broke over time. That’s a fact. The military is the one activity that the government must continue to operate and control for public accountability reasons. Even there, the private sector is deeply involved. We have learned that technologies instrumental in supplying all-important services, health care included, are superior when the private sector is involved in their creation.
Where the profit motive is absent from the overall equation, costs tend to grow without constraint. Profit is the expected result of risk that investors take when they buy into development of technology and systems for a given activity, health care included.
One cannot separate the delivery of health care from new medical technologies, including break-through drugs, that are part of the innovation cycle needed to advance the quality and effectiveness of health care. Insurance reform is needed, and legislation to provide that is well within reach without instituting a government-run option.
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