Massachusetts government regulators will impose tough new restrictions on hospitals attempting to provide build more outpatient clinics to compete with existing facilities. The claim is that these new centers will drive up costs by "duplicating services". Hence, government restriction of patient choice is essential in order to keep costs down for their "universal health care" system.
I don't have a PhD in economics. But I notice that prices keep going down down whenever there are multiple restaurants or grocery stores in the same area engaging in this sort of "wasteful duplication". And customer service improves.
Perhaps there's a word for this sort of government restriction of vital services to control costs in the name of "fairness" that begins with an "R" and ends with "ationing". But I'm not an economist, so I'm not sure what it might be...
(Via Jared S.)
The blog of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
