In Defense of Gouging

There are lots of things to hate about our current medical system, and all of us have our own favorite things to hate. This is mine: the fact that the system massively overcharges you if you’re uninsured, and they do it just because they can. If you’re uninsured, you’ve got no leverage, no alternatives, no nothing. So you get screwed. It’s like the shopkeepers who charge twenty bucks for a pair of flashlight batteries after hurricanes. Maybe it’s the free market at work, but if so, that’s all the worse for the free market. In the healthcare biz, it just doesn’t work.

I see it’s time to roll up the sleeves.

First, let’s look at price gouging after a hurricane. I admit it — in a free market, that’s precisely what happens. People get charged much higher prices. And I actually don’t mind calling it gouging.

But do you know what happens when a disaster strikes in an unfree market? Forced appropriation by the politically well-connected. Instead of higher prices for everyone, you get free stuff for a privileged few — and nothing, or very little, for everyone else.

Let’s use the proper term here as well: theft. In a free market, you see gouging. In an unfree one, you see theft.

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