Book Review:

Healthy Competition: Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health
Care and How to Free It

By Michael F. Cannon & Michael D. Tanner

About the Book:

America's healthcare system is at a crossroads, faced with rising
costs, quality concerns, and a lack of patient control. Some blame
market forces. Yet many troubles can be traced directly to pervasive
government influence: entitlements, tax laws, and costly regulations.

Consumer choice and competition deliver higher quality and lower
prices in other areas of the economy. The authors conclude that
removing restrictions can do the same for health care.

In the newly updated edition, the authors expand on their prior work
with new analysis of the best and worst ideas in health care reform -
on both the right and the left.

This includes examining the health care proposals of presidential
candidates, with special analysis of the recent Massachusetts
Connector health care reforms.

For example:

The Massachusetts health care reforms enacted by then-Gov. Mitt
Romney created a system of "managed competition." Democratic
presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack
Obama have adopted managed competition as part of their reform
proposals. Is the Massachusetts Connector a market-based health care
reform, or just more big government? See pages 38-40.

Massachusetts also created an "individual mandate." Clinton and
Edwards have proposed the same.

Should government require all Americans to purchase health insurance?

Are individual mandates feasible?

Do they lead to "universal coverage," or improve quality or access?
See pages 43-47.

What Others Have Said
"We begin with a riddle. What country's health care system offers the
best health services in the world, is constantly criticized for not
being accessible enough, and yet is so accessible that overuse is
leading to runaway costs?

The first part of the riddle reveals that the answer could only be
America. The remainder gives the contours of a paradox that vexes
policymakers year in and year out. Welcome to health care, American-
style....

To carry the health care debate on its next lap, America first needs
a clear, well-informed, and well-reasoned analysis of the apparent
paradox of its health care system. And it needs an agenda for reform
that respects the wonders that modern medicine has developed and the
creative market processes that deliver them.

Cannon and Tanner offer proposals that would further tap the power of
markets to make health care more valuable and more affordable. That
makes Healthy Competition essential reading."

--George P. Shultz, Former Secretary of State

"Surprisingly readable, extraordinarily comprehensive, highly
persuasive. Read how the key to improving health care in the United
States is to convert the patient from a ward of the state to an
independent, self-interested customer."

--Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics

"Health care costs and insurance premiums are rapidly increasing,
making both insured and uninsured consumers worse off...[P]
olicymakers are again confronting the fact that change is desperately
needed. The direction of that change, however, is anything but
settled. Does the solution lie in private markets, greater government
involvement, or some combination of the two?

Healthy Competition is a timely and important contribution to this
debate. The authors argue passionately that markets are the best
available vehicle for reforming the health care system. In general,
their philosophy is that reform should increase the number of
decisions made by patients and decrease the number of decisions made
by government officials."

--Deborah Haas-Wilson, Smith College, in New England Journal of Me...

"Healthy Competition…is a valuable challenge to the health policy
community to take health policy debates to a moral plane where
consumer welfare and individual freedom are given more than just lip
service."

--Clark Havighurst, Duke University School of Law, in Health Affairs

"[Healthy Competition] should be read by anyone who wants to
understand the free-market health care movement and the challenge it
poses to liberal orthodoxy in health policy."

--Professor Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, Health Economics, Policy and Law

"In Healthy Competition, Michael F. Cannon and Michael D. Tanner
provide a concise and highly readable summary of the evidence
refuting the case against market competition in health care. Cannon
and Tanner... provide a valuable service by accumulating the evidence
that demonstrates that although health care is not the "same" as
personal computers or household appliances, it is not so "different"
that market forces cannot work to consumers' benefit."

--Robert L. Ohsfeldt, Texas A&M Health Science Center, The
Independent Review

"By restoring free market dynamics to the healthcare system, the
authors propose to cure many of the ills that plague it. This book
should prove to be an invaluable resource for anyone looking for a
concise exposition and analysis of what is wrong with our health care
system and interesting ways to repair it.

There is valuable information on almost every page of this well-
researched study. Even if the reader disagrees with some of the
suggested solutions, this is a fact-packed read that will provide
reference material for quite some time to come."

--Kirk Hoewisch, President, HSA Bank [Read the full review]

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