Priceless John Goodman

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American Spectator:

With the publication of his path-breaking book Patient Power in 1992, John Goodman did more to change the course of health care in America than Barack Obama has done, or will do. Goodman has just published a new book, Priceless: Curing the Health Care Crisis, which offers the prospect of a worldwide revolution in health care policy. With the Supreme Court about to rule on Obamacare, this book could not be more timely.

Patient Power argued for policies that would shift the power and control over health care funds and decisions to patients and their chosen doctors, and away from third party bureaucracies such as government, HMOs, and insurance companies. It spawned Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and other consumer directed health plans that have proven far more effective in controlling and reducing health care and insurance costs than anything President Obama has ever done.

 

Health Care Liberation

 

Goodman begins his new book by explaining the vast, new revolutionary vistas that have opened up since Patient Power:

 

First is the importance of liberating doctors. Our focus in Patient Power was on freeing the patients….Give patients control over their own healthcare dollars, we argued, and they will become more careful, prudent consumers of health care. What I didn't anticipate was that the changes on the supply side of the market would be far more profound than the changes on the demand side….On the provider side, however, we are unleashing a torrent of entrepreneurial activity that would have been unthinkable only a decade ago..

 

The foundation for the revolutionary changes is still Patient Power, Goodman explains:

 

When patients aren't spending their own money, there is no way doctors can compete for their patronage based on price. When they don't compete on price, they don't compete on quality either. The services they offer will be only those services the third parties pay for and only in settings and ways the third parties have blessed. But give patients control over their own healthcare dollars and the provider community will begin to meet needs in ways the third-party-payer bureaucracies could never have dreamed of.