Sang's Economics Blog
Disadvantages of Private Health Care
Economics Help: Click Here
1. Inequality
People who are low in income will have greater burden of medical fees than those with high income. Also, people with high income usually have medical insurance covered by their employing company. But, people with low income usually don’t have a medical insurance covered by their employers.
Children, students, or those with no jobs will not have a medical insurance. Some companies cover medical insurance for the employee’s children, however, majority of companies simple do not because of its expensive cost. So, children or student are vulnerable to injuries or disease as the medical fee will be so expensive for them.
2. Health Care is is a Merit Good and it has positive externalities.
Health care is indeed a merit good. However, in a country with many privatized hospitals, the consumption or usage of medical service is lower than the optimum consumption. So medical market fails due to under-consumption of medical services. So governments should intervene and support the health care.
Also, many people know that health care creates some positive externalities. A good medical system can contribute to a successful economy. An economy will be improved by people being treated quickly/efficiently which will help the improvement of labor productivity. In free-market system, this positive externality is ignored and therefore the health care market fails.
3. It is expensive.
Private hospitals do have motives to make profit out of medical services. You can quote on Adam Smith that all human beings are motivated by private profits. So, usually privatized hospitals charge its patients higher than government-owned hospitals. It is because the medical fee is not supported by the government. Also, they must have marginal profit so they would have raise the medial fee.
