Health care cannot be treated as a commercial transaction as one side has no bargaining power on entering or any control once within the transaction. The providers have all the power and can charge whatever they like for as long as they like – and they will if they are purely commercial entities. It is not possible to have a functioning health system without an overriding ethical basis at its core. That can only be supplied by regulation or by direct control. The latter is usually cheaper for the same result, as can be seen by the relative costs of health systems in various countries.
Health care cannot be treated as a commercial transaction as one side has no bargaining power on entering or any control once within the transaction. The providers have all the power and can charge whatever they like for as long as they like – and they will if they are purely commercial entities. It is not possible to have a functioning health system without an overriding ethical basis at its core. That can only be supplied by regulation or by direct control. The latter is usually cheaper for the same result, as can be seen by the relative costs of health systems in various countries.