Paul Krugman summarizes Kenneth Arrow’s argument that health care can’t be marketed like bread or TVs.

You could rely on a health maintenance organization to make the hard choices and do the cost management, and to some extent we do. But HMOs have been highly limited in their ability to achieve cost-effectiveness because people don’t trust them — they’re profit-making institutions, and your treatment is their cost.

via Why markets can’t cure healthcare – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

I have a similar problem with most financial products as the players are mostly middlemen and so we aren’t really their customers. The incentives to treat individuals well just aren’t there when the individuals aren’t the customers.