Also agreed on other forms of medicine having the same problems with wasteful overhead and outright fraud and abuse. In an ideal world, the marketplace would be able to eliminate these people. However, as seen in industry after industry, it sometimes fails in doing so. This is where governments step in to regulate and ensure consumers are protected.

Healthcare is even more fraught with risk if the government doesn’t regulate. First, consumers are not educated in this highly technical field. Even more bothersome, consumers trust doctors and health care professionals in a way they’d never trust a plumber or car mechanic (two other highly specialized fields). Second, in many cases the consumer doesn’t pay for the treatment… insurance companies do.

Well, one might argue, insurance companies have an incentive to regulate. The problem with that is that their incentive is to spend as little money as possible without angering consumers so much that they leave in large numbers (particularly healthy ones). So a) they are not looking out for people’s best health and economic interest b) they might let some waste continue to increase satisfaction of relatively healthy patients.

So, this is why government regulation is especially important in this area.

Yeah, some of the larger dental companies have become a super scam. But it’s no different than anything else in medicine. My GP likes to send me to a lab for bloodwork he has an interest in. When I finally asked him to refer me to another lab, he acted kind of indignant and I got to explain RESPA to him.

Bottom line, if I can’t self deal in my business, you can’t in yours and I don’t give a flying fuck how long you went to goddamn school.