Contra Ezra Klein, Avik Roy insists that competition works in healthcare:
[T]he principle of making the sellers of health care compete with each other—is at the heart of competitive bidding, which in turn is the core of the Wyden-Ryan proposal. In rural areas where hospital monopolies reign supreme, Wyden-Ryan will probably have a minor impact on health spending. But in urban areas, where insurers can play competing hospitals against each other to keep prices down, competitive bidding is likely to work, and work big. A demonstration project by the City of Denver in the late Nineties found that competitive bidding saved between 25 and 38 percent, compared to traditional Medicare. So yes, competition works. But you need it on both sides of the equation. Wyden-Ryan will bring competition to health plans. We then need to work on bringing competition to hospitals, by addressing the laws and regulations that protect dinosaur incumbent general hospitals at the expense of innovative, specialized entrepreneurs.
More Ryan-Wyden reax here.
The Dish 