In other words there is no option for “healthcare consumption” to be “independent from income and relative prices” assuming the goal is to decrease the cost of healthcare services to make them more affordable to more of the population.

Even in a “universal” government controlled healthcare system, the providers of service will have to be paid. The level of pay will determine the quality of care, etc, etc.

1. Our Founding Fathers did not provide, in the Constitution, any means to establish receiving medical or health care as a right.
2. Until the 20th Century, providing goods and services related to medical care (to treat illness) and health care (to support good health) was not regulated. Consequently, costs were low, competition in the marketplace provided many choices and ideas that the AMA didn’t like flourished. In this free market atmosphere, non-medically-trained (by AMA standards) people developed Osteopathy, Chiropractic, Naturopathy, Thomsonianism, nutrition-based healing practices, Eclectic Medicine (a combination AMA-type medical care and herbalism). There was the rapid growth of homeopathy (an import from Germany developed by AMA-type MDs as a rejection of AMA-type medical ideas) as well as the growth of a variety of other healing products and practices that are now the underpinnings of the so-called “natural health” industry.
3. Our current medical system was designed and is run by the AMA-inspired medical folks and backed by Big Pharma to force people to use their products and services as well as guarantee payment for them. This group has systematically condemned non-drug, non-high tech healing modalities claiming they are “unscientific”, “unproven” quackery.
4. While the AMA-type medical products and services related to emergency room care, surgery and some other high tech modalities are true miracles, the AMA-type medical philosophy has been a tragic failure when it comes to the diagnosis and treatment of chronic illness. The goal of the medical “experts” running the current medical system is to name more and more conditions that need lifetime drug maintenance, conditions often better served by natural health care means at a much lower cost.

Until we get real about why millions of Americans don’t go to MDs, don’t buy health insurance and don’t want anything to do with government-designed one-size-fits-all payment schemes, we will never be able to bring down prices, expand choices and have a fully-functioning medical and health care system in America, like we used to have before the 20th Century.

The Commonwealth crowd doesn’t believe in utility maximization. They believe in people consuming health care, whether they like it or not.

Greg is right. Utility maximizing individuals will vary their consumption of health care as incomes and relative prices change. And the HSA gives them a vehicle to do that.

Case closed!