Virginia Postrel Medical Quotations

Medicare is a monopoly: a central-planning bureaucracy grafted onto American health care. It exercises a stranglehold on the health care of all Americans over 65, and on the medical practices of almost all physicians. Medicare decides what is legitimate and what is not: which prices may be charged and which services may be rendered.

The Internet ethos of diversity and competition runs exactly counter to uniform, gatekeeper-oriented medical culture - the technocratic philosophy of the 'one best way' embodied in our pharmaceutical regulations. On the Net, medical information is abundant, and pharmacies, domestic and foreign, operate on many different models.

In post-Vietnam, post-Watergate America, skeptical voters demand full disclosure of everything from candidates' finances to their medical records, and spin-savvy accounts of backstage machinations dominate political coverage.

The growth of medical expenditures in the U.S. is not caused by administrative costs but by increases in the technical intensity of care over time - a.k.a. medical progress.