Competitive healthcare necessary for quality

You know the morning scene at the Rice Memorial Center: a line, 15-plus deep, stretched past 13th Street, with the forward momentum of Ron Jeremy going to church. Coffee, the veritable lifeblood of college students everywhere, is a morning necessity for the majority of the Rice campus. The university response to these daybreak-coffee-cries is the Rice Coffeehouse. The cubbyhole that comprises this campus enterprise is the sole location, within about a half-mile radius, from which study-weary students can buy a decent cup of coffee.

With no other options, the bleary-eyed students inch, ever so slowly, forward in line. Caffeine-deprived and anxious, it is incumbent upon the continually time-constrained undergrad to wait while one or two visibly exhausted and overworked coffee clerks fill orders that can take up to a minute to dictate. Compounding the matter, the individual who wants no more than a single, easy cup of coffee must wait, while the “mocha, chai tea, half soy, half skim, with half a tablespoon of sugar and three shakes of cinnamon” makes his order. With no competition, there is little incentive for efficiency or improvements to this system.

The same phenomenon is present at 13th Street. While the line does not usually stretch out of the door, somehow it is possible for there to be a packed store, three cash registers, and yet, a client turnover rate of about one every five minutes. 13th Street has no directive for performance because, as the only snack option, there is no need. In this dichotomy, the customer is an afterthought, because, the customer has no choice. At 13th Street, the rule “the customer is always right” does not apply. The preferred motto at this bastion of incompetence is instead: “The clerks will overcharge you at their leisure, and if you play your cards right they just might eke out a smile.”

Now that I have put any ability for me to get a snack at the RMC anytime soon in jeopardy, I will get to the point. My purpose in detailing the inefficiencies, incompetence and inconveniences inherent to monopolies, such as those present at the RMC, is to provide an example of an environment without competition and, by extension, the results of such a model. The nationalization of healthcare in America will lead to this very lack of consumer choice and, in so doing, the degradation of the country’s overall medical system.

Americans need only look at such high-minded countries as Canada and the European nations to see the follies of this type of vast government expansion. Since surrendering their medical industries to the state, these nations have been wholly unable to fulfill their lofty, yet well-intentioned, goals. Huge waiting lists and long wait times for consultations with and treatments by medical professionals, outdated medical equipment, increased costs, poor care and an overall atmosphere of dissatisfaction are just a few of the problems ravaging these monopolistic systems.

To what, however, can we attribute these failures? To answer that question we must first remember that there is nothing in this world that is free — all things have a cost, be it money, time, health and so forth. And no matter how vital healthcare may seem, no man has the right to force others to pay for his necessities. Universal healthcare requires just that, by way of the taxpayer. Secondly, no longer spending their own money, patients do not have any incentive to seek out the best cost. In that same vein, doctors and drug companies, no longer accountable to consumer demand, lack compelling motivation to perform at their highest level. Without competition, the overall quality of care decreases and the average citizen is left bearing the brunt — while the rich travel abroad for medical treatment at the first sign of a sore throat.

If poor-quality healthcare, high costs and the like do not turn you off, perhaps this will: With the government footing the bill for your doctors visits and medical needs, this leviathan now has an increased interest in your lifestyle. Universal healthcare is thus the death knell of individual privacy.

The potential nationalization of America’s medical industry is a complicated and messy subject and, I concede, far too complex to scrutinize fully within the confines of an opinion column. Nonetheless, it is a relevant issue worth keeping in mind. I offer this merely as a light-hearted topic for contemplation while waiting in line, this morning, for that essential cup of coffee.

Caroline May is a Will Rice College junior.

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