Medicine as a Public Calling
53 Pages Posted: 17 Sep 2014 Last revised: 24 Jun 2015
Date Written: September 15, 2014
Abstract
The debate over how to tame private medical spending tends to pit advocates of government-provided insurance — a single-payer scheme — against those who would prefer to harness market forces to hold down costs. When it is mentioned at all, the possibility of regulating the medical industry as a public utility is brusquely dismissed as anathema to the American regulatory tradition. This dismissiveness, however, rests on a failure to appreciate just how deeply the public utility model shaped health law in the twentieth century — and how it continues to shape health law even today. Closer economic regulation of the medical industry may or may not be prudent, but it is by no means incompatible with our governing institutions and political culture. Indeed, the durability of such regulation suggests that the modern embrace of market-based approaches in the medical industry may be more ephemeral than it seems.
Keywords: health law, administrative law, public utility
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