‘Boutique’ Medicine Will Compromise Long-Term Economic Stability, Op-Ed Says

"Boutique health care" would increase the role of individual incomes in the U.S. health care system at the cost of the long-term "prosperity and stability" of the nation, Robert Whitcomb writes in a Providence Journal opinion piece. Whitcomb writes in response to an opinion piece in the March 26 Boston Globe by Uwe Reinhardt, a Princeton University economist, that discusses how some economists argue that individuals with higher incomes, who "contribute" more to society, "deserve better health care." According to Whitcomb, however, a health care system that allows individuals with higher incomes to "opt out" of managed care and purchase "fancy private services" could "get very damaging to the country." He recommends that the United States, a nation based on the "population believing that everyone has a shot at prosperity," should establish a system of universal health care -- not a system where medical services become "increasingly allocated on the basis of a person's money" -- to ensure a "stable democracy." Whitcomb concludes that the "class-privileged health-care and medical system we are now building" may endanger the "whole American project," and as a result, "even the rich, insulated with their state-of-the-art medical care," may find the United States a "dangerous place to live" in the future (Whitcomb, Providence Journal, 3/29).