
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, April 24, 1993                   TAG: 9304260349
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

MARKET PRINCIPLES APPLY TO HEALTH CARE

WELL, IT is apparent that those in favor of nationalizing medical care in this country have sunk so low as to feed the American public lists of physicians' and specialists' salaries (March 31 Associated Press story, "Public thinks doctors' pay too high; it's really higher") in order to put more emotion into the health-care debate. I thought that McCarthyism left in the '50s.

I hope that the American public realizes that the issue at hand is the value of medical care and services, not the value of the people behind those services. Usually, one follows the other in our society, though putting the price tag on a health-care provider instead of a health-care service drags the issue out of the market economy and into an arbitrarily based, controlled economy. Is this what we want? Should we start asking for the salaries of the owners of grocery stores, clothing shops and restaurants that we support to make decisions on whether to buy their products? Since we base those decisions on the price and quality of their services and products, those same market principles should apply for health-care services and should be encouraged by the present administration.

The time should have long passed when Americans realized that placing services as part of the free-market economy only forces those services to become less expensive and of better quality. Conversely, the easiest way to encourage inefficiency, waste and lack of motivation is to have those services controlled by a large bureaucracy, such as the state or federal government. VICTOR NADER ROANOKE

by CNB