Free Market Health Care

According to an Associate Press story filed by Joseph Pisani this past Saturday, Groupon (along with other daily deals sites) is moving into health care.  In other words coupon-based marketing is now flourishing, at least on the Web, in areas such as dental examinations, cleaning, and X-rays, as well as eye examinations and even Lasik eye surgery.  I am sure that many of this new breed of coupon-clippers see this as a way of sticking it to the insurance industry, the primary agent responsible for detaching health care from any vestige of resembling a public service and transmogrifying it into an industry to be managed by the same practices applied to manufacturing cars in Detroit (the epitome of a simile that serves as a good example and a bad example at the same time).

Now we see that it is not just the practice of health care that has been influenced by such industrialization.  In the world the Internet has made, any product or service can be allowed to flourish under a free market economy.  This “daily deals” approach firmly ensconces health care as a suite of offerings on the free market.  Of course the golden rule of the free market is caveat emptor;  and, as they say these days, there’s an app for that.  The buyer who knows enough to be wary can, as Pisani’s article is quick to point out, always consult Yelp.