Doctors should not be allowed to compete with other doctors' prices

I would like to begin by saying that the presentation of my debate is incredibly informal, especially compared with that of my opponent so if my posts become difficult to read i apologize, however the content is here. Anyway, on with the debate. My opponent begins with an A priori, asserting that since health care in the United States exceeds all other, my statement about cheaper prices resulting in inferior products is false. If my opponent had dome his homework he would not make such a case. A study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine compared 19 industrialized nations such as Canada and European nations, and ranked the U.S. last. The basis for the study was the number of deaths that resulted from deaths by treatable illnesses; 100,000 of these deaths occur a year. Japan, France, and Australia ranked highest. Our infant mortality rates are also one of the worst, 5 in every 1,000 babies die a year. Second, none would argue that all doctors in the United States are equal. The smartest doctors (and consequently the most expensive) are usually better than those who attended Guata La Hara or other inferior medical schools in South America. My opponent talks about the outsourcing of medicine, the labor of the doctor cannot be outsourced by the quality of that labor can. http://www.alternet.org... http://www.livescience.com... My opponent also assumes that I am advocating a set price for doctors, I in fact make no such proposition. Doctors should be paid for the service they provide, not set prices for each visit. I would also like an example of the "illegal 'medical'practices" to which he is referring. He also assumes the position that my proposition would lead to the collapse of the market. Here is a quick history/economics lesson. (1) When our health care system was originally founded, it was against the law (and still is to a lesser degree today) to allow doctors and hospitals to compete and the system did not collapse (2) The system also collapses when prices rise as well, which has been the trend despite the 'managed competition' in today's medicine. The most important component of this debate is the quality of the service provided. If doctors are allowed to freely advertise prices and compete with insurance companies bids, quality will decrease. The doctors who went to Harvard medical won't drop their prices just to compete with the cheapest doctor who's tuition bills are less than the former. The decrease of quality will not be a tolerable one, not like between Abercrombie and Old Navy but like between a nice Italian restaurant and McDonald's. While it is true that one my choose to opt for the better doctor, their insurance provider may not and many won't be able to afford the better doctor and are essentially stuck with the McDonald's version. Secondly, better care comes from hospitals, doctors, and companies collaborating to maximize effeciency. If they start to jockey for position, they loose interest in the patient. Instead of offering the best solution to a paticular situation, they will offer the cheapest. Medication instead of physical therapy or other inferior solutions. Assume for a moment that a doctor invents a revolutionary procedure or pill tht cures the worst of any cancer, that one doctor has two options. One is tell the medical community, or (the more common with perscription drugs) put a patent on it and monopolize it. Third, the basic free market model relies on supply and demand, the driving force being the demand. In medicine the demand comes from the doctor telling the pateint what he or she needs. There is an enormous amount of trust between the doctor and the pateint becasue the average - even the above average comsumer does not know enough about the medical feild to self-diagnos anything more than a common cold. Plus they do not have the power to make a perscription. The pateint puts all faith in their doctor, the doctor then will have two choices under a competitive market. (1) perscribe the best course of action or (2) perscribe the least expensive so the insurance company doesn't complain about the money they have to dish out. Furthermore, the competitive model, a Harvard buisness professor Michael Porter wrote "competitors do not create value they divide it..." Maggie Mahar commented further in her book "Money Driven Medicine" that passing the costs like a hot potatoe creates a net value of zero. She also notes that this adds to further administrative costs, an important note for the next point. In short, insurance companies become the deciders and not the doctors. The insurance companies also do not have the mental knowledge to make such decisions and are more interested in profit than in the pateint. This is one of the ways we got things like Viagra, it sells. Finally I would like to clarify that the cost of medicine in the U.S. is outrageous and something must be done about it, but cutting the doctor's paycheck is not the way to do it. Evidence suggests that over one third of health care costs goes to unneccasary tests, duplicate tests, unproven experimental procedures, bueracracy, and overpriced drugs (which I have shown above how companies monopolize new medical breakthroughs.) Please excuse any and all grammatical errors, spellcheck isn't working.