Despite numerous federal interventions that have favored health care providers and insurers, the industry has yet to figure out how to overcome the problems of adverse selection, moral hazard, information asymmetry, and free-ridership. Did it ever make sense to create a health care system in which fourth-party employers purchase insurance for their first-party employees from third-party corporations, which in turn pay second-party providers for health care products and services?

Charles Kroncke is Associate Professor of Economics at College of Mount St. Joseph.
Ronald F. White is professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Ethics at Mount St. Joseph University.
Bureaucracy and GovernmentGovernment and PoliticsHealth and HealthcareHealth InsuranceMedicare and Medicaid
Other Independent Review articles by Ronald F. White
Spring 2007 Institutional Review Board Mission Creep: The Common Rule, Social Science, and the Nanny State
Fall 2006 Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and the Demise of the Ideal Model of Health Care