Sitting and suffering
THE public monopoly's weapon (I was arguing last week) is the waiting list. The longest and cruellest waiting lists of all are those of the Health Service, and, in a new Hobart Paperback, David Green looks for ways to bring market forces to bear on them (Challenge to the NHS, Institute of Economic Affairs, £4). Most instructive are the arguments he cites from those who believe that it cannot be done. A `leader of the prevailing orthodoxy', says Dr Green, is Professor Culyer of York University, whose lakes and lawns, when I saw them last week, had certainly attracted more than their fair share of geese. The Profes- sor is quoted as saying that 'the mar- keteers' image of the market for health is a completely irrelevant description of an unattainable Utopia': producers (doctors) will always dominate such a market be- cause consumers (patients) do not know enough to choose. You may resent such patronage. Or you could reply that the market is in different kinds of knowledge — that a medically ignorant patient can recognise an unhelpful doctor. Markets in information, you could argue, can work without balancing like against like. The Stock Exchange works in that way and so does Tattersalls' Ring, and so does uni- versity entrance. No doubt a more relevant and attainable system would make all prospective students wait in line, and then choose York.
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