Peter Ubel author of Free Market Madness, was today’s second keynote speaker and challenged the idea that an empowered and education consumer is always a good thing.

Ubel started out by posing the question if the idea of a free market, where increased demand for a product or a service causes costs to fall and the quality levels increase, could be applied to the healthcare industry.

However, one of the challenges is that humans are typically flawed decision makers and prone to poor judgement. He illustrated this with an example of where patients, who were educated about the relatively low risk of developing a particular cancer, were less likely to choose to have the regular tests for early detection. He believes that this is also true of clinicians, who are also likely to make irrational decisions. If something is new, expensive and scarce then doctors will likely choose it as the belief is that it must be better than something already on the market.  Could this be one of the reasons for the spiralling cost of healthcare delivery?

All of us, whether patients or doctors, make decisions based not just on available information, but also under the influence of unconscious factors, and this has implications for healthcare policy makers. He made four key points:

-          You can’t expect the free market to solve everything as there are lots of unconscious factors influencing outcomes

-          We must move beyond comprehension alone – education does not solve the issue

-          Persuasion should be used appropriately with honest labelling and through social marketing

-          Utilise financial incentives by taxing unhealthy foods and subsidizing healthy food or fitness centres

Ubel concluded by stating that all of this must be done by balancing freedom and well-being, and by helping markets to do what they do best and restrain them from what they do worst.

It was a whirlwind tour through some interesting research but certainly a topic worthy of further reading.