For those who have access to it, the American health care system undoubtedly delivers some of the finest care in the world. Unique among the industrialized democracies, the United States still retains a health care system in which the free market prevails, and physicians function primarily as free agents, selling their services to patient-consumers, most of whom attempt to cushion themselves from the potentially devastating costs of serious illness through private insurance coverage that they purchase or that they receive from employers. Some 37 million Americans mostly working people and members of their families carry no health insurance, but earn just enough to be disqualified from receiving publicly funded medical care. Does it make sense to operate a health care system that forces many people to put off preventive medical care and regular health checkups because they can't afford them, only to arrive at the door of the emergency room in need of extraordinary and expensive treatments to address serious health problems. I think the evidence for that is real simple that not everybody gets the care they need.
People suffer needlessly.
Moses bristles at suggestions that the flaws in the system are the result of inefficiency or high fees paid to doctors. One way to phrase the question is to ask if there is such a thing as a right to health care. But Cook notes that if such a right exists, it differs fundamentally from traditionally acknowledged rights of free speech or religion. Entitlement rights are necessarily limited by a society's willingness and ability to provide the entitlement. In other words, they depend on a society's resources and the choices it makes about how those resources are used.