ABSTRACT
American medical care is often asserted to be the "best in the world". It is certainly the most high tech and can with few exceptions provide more complex, sophisticated treatments than can doctors and hospitals in any other country. The product is generally not interchangeable, with minor exceptions as different generic brands of a medication. Many health care market choices have consequences for persons other than the buyer and seller, consequences the market price does not take into account. Extramarket distribution requires special justification. The reason people sometimes decide as a society that a rival and excludable good should be allocated on a nonmarket basis can be hinted at by reviewing a little more economics terminology. From quite another position, the argument for supplementing the market mode of supplying care rests upon extra-economic rationales. From whatever motivation and rationale, the United States does have a variety of medical entitlements, related to age, income, disease, and other factors.
