Health Care Needs a Dose of Competition

by Michael F. Cannon

Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, and co-author of Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It from which this article is adapted.

Hurricane Katrina has brought to the fore the strengths and weaknesses of America's health care delivery system. Millions of individual Americans, acting on their own initiative, rushed to meet the dire need Katrina created. Those efforts include providers rushing to assist in person, as well as charitable contributions made by those who never left home. In contrast, the response of government has been alarmingly slow and has even thwarted private efforts.