Only the Best Possible Care?

During a recent discussion about health insurance, a friend told me that "whatever the most effective treatment is, that's the only option that should be available."

I disagree with this sentiment for two reasons:

1) It's impossible to implement and maintain, and

2) It's not something we as health care consumers actually want.

The reasoning for the first argument is pretty obvious. How could you possibly control the number of treatment options for any given condition? You could try making any form of treatment other than the approved option illegal, but that's not likely to stop doctors from performing them. Besides, we've all seen the horrendous outcome of outlawing things people want (prohibition, the War on Drugs, and gun control laws all come to mind).

There are a couple of reasons, though, why we wouldn't want there to be only one option...no matter how good it is. The first of these is price. It's likely to be high. A monopoly granted on only one form of treatment, or one product, or one service won't necessarily cause the price of that thing to increase immediately, but it will prevent it from decreasing as it normally would with the introduction of new technologies and more efficient processes. Sure, many companies may try to find ways to provide the same thing at a lower cost, but their efforts would be subject to scrutiny by whatever government agency oversees their particular market. This would add cost to the final product and delay its time to market, thereby reducing the incentive to innovate.

Also, by limiting consumer choice to only one option, many consumers would be priced out of the treatment they need. For instance, if a law were passed that said only the largest television with the best possible picture could be sold to consumers, many people would go without TVs, as not everyone would be able to afford the biggest and best. Since, however, there are myriad television choices available to consumers at varying prices, nearly every household in the United States has more than one television. An increase in consumer health care choices will, through competition, cause prices to decrease and quality to increase.