How to Grow the Supply of Healthcare

"For two or three generations, we've almost completely ignored the supply side" of health care, warns Robert Graboyes, an economist who specializes in health care issues. That's especially a big problem now that Obamacare is coming online. The whole point of the program, after all, is to increase demand for medical services. Yet even President Obama and his supporters acknowledge the plan does next to nothing to generate more doctors and more medical innovations.

Graboyes, a senior research analyst at George Mason's Mercatus Center, sat down with Reason TV's Nick Gillespie to outline immediate ways to grow the number of hospitals, doctors, and nurses to serve millions of newly insured patients.

Even more important is the need to increase the pace of the transformative medical innovation that has always extended lifespans and raised the quality of life, says Graboyes. At the dawn of "molecular medicine," in which drugs are targeted to specific individuals, the FDA's backward-looking and hyper-expensive approval process is more destructive than ever. Medicare's byzantine cost-codes freeze into place yesteryear's solutions. At the state level, "certificate of need" laws make it tougher than ever to expand or build new health care facilities.

We've got to "look for every obstruction to the supply and get rid of it," says Graboyes.

Produced by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Ford Fischer and Josh Swain.

About 9 minutes.

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