ABSTRACT
To say that the American healthcare system is market-based is likely to raise many objections, because the United States spends heavily on Medicare and Medicaid, and it also runs a number of public hospitals, as well as many preventive programs including the federal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Drug and Food Administration (DFA). But the American health-care system remains the most market-based system in the world, because public healthcare is essentially a supplement to the dominant market-based system. This is true, notwithstanding the fact that total government spending per capita in the United States on healthcare was 25.3 percent higher than that in Canada and 31.6 percent higher than that in the United Kingdom (2008 figures, PPP dollars, source: OECD Health Data 2011).
