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Uncertainty In Health Care

Decent Essays

The consumption of health care left to the market assumes certain conditions that are not reliably met in health care. For an ideal market, we seek both equity and efficiency. Efficiency in the sense of achieving optimal health benefits when allocating resources at minimal costs (1). Equity in a perfect market relates to the fair and just distribution of health care services (2). We will see that attempts to leave health care consumption to the market will achieve neither as certain conditions in health care result in extensive failure of the market. The key conditions that do not exist in health care are certainty, consumer sovereignty and symmetry of information between the provider and consumer (1). Externalities are also inherent in health which contributes to market failure in health care (1).
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When a person may become sick, where and how they will become sick are uncertain events. Serious illness is often unexpected and unplanned for. They are also highly expensive such that in a free market ideal, those who cannot afford it will be neglected (1). This is where health care insurance may step in. As businesses of their own seeking profit, insurance companies may exploit people’s risk aversion (1). High premiums may be bought in hopes to plan for the sudden and expensive illnesses however these premiums may not be at fair prices. In an unregulated market, many competing insurance companies may continue to push these prices higher as they take advantage of the uncertainty of health and individual’s risk aversion to buy premium packages (1). In other words, it fails allocative efficacy as more expensive premiums to cover catastrophic circumstances would be contracted and those who could not afford it or felt it was not worth the cost would miss out altogether

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