Access to quality health care service in the Unites States has become a pivotal issue in recent years. Historically provisioned under a system whereby a employers pay a large share of medical costs, recent experiences with that system have shown to be less than fully satisfying: with high deductible (payments), confusing prices and almost unintelligible billing. Further, citizens at times find themselves without access to any healthcare support due to job transitioning or even pre-existing conditions and note that catastrophic disease is the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the country.

Even with these faults some people cling to the current system as 'the best in the world' based on their view of access at the middle and higher income levels and the highly innovative pharmaceutical industry that resides in the U.S. and relies on price freedom to "recover" research costs.

With that as context, the question to discuss this week is the government's role, if any, in the industry. You can address it from multiple viewpoints in this regard including market structure and concentration, price elasticity, and, for the purposes of the current reading, economic regulation as well as externalities and market failure (be sure to define this from a MEc viewpoint).

While there is no single "correct" answer to these questions, MEc can provide guidance as to how it may be improved. Let's hear your view on that based on objective materials you find in the current reading.