The healthcare sector

Currently, the American society has focused on the upcoming new healthcare policy to replace the Obamacare. The healthcare sector is very complicated that it is believed to have enormous positive externalities; therefore, the society requests enormous government intervention in this sector. Once the government intervenes in the healthcare sector, the government has to decide the correct level of subsidies and taxation. The market information is too complicated for the government to make a decision that pleases everyone. In addition, the government is never able to make everyone pleased, as everyone has his/her individual unique preferences. Furthermore, the negative comments on the government intervention will draw much more attention than the positive sectors will; therefore, it seems there are more people against the government policies than those supporting the policies. Under such circumstance, the government also faces lots of opposition when the society's attention is drawn towards the opposition force.

Despite the government has difficulties to make everyone satisfied, the healthcare sector has its own complexity as well. It involves cooperation between many different sectors, including the insurance sector, the pharmacy industry, the medical sector (including hospitals and doctors), the medical equipment industry and etc. Some of these sectors do not meet the conditions of a perfectly competitive market. Actually, most of these sectors have monopoly or oligopoly markets. Therefore, the prices in the healthcare sector tend to be higher than the normal levels under a perfectly competitive market condition. In addition, in the modern world, wealthier people tend to live much healthier lifestyles, as they have time and money to go to gyms and eat healthily, so they are likely to need health care less than poorer people who are more likely to have unhealthy lifestyles. However, almost everyone would like to have the best available health care they can get, so the demand for health care could be infinite. Therefore, it is possible to see some people are overconsuming health care, some people are underconsuming health care due to their poorer financial conditions.

Overall, as people's demands for health care could be close to infinite, and the supply and the demand can hardly find an equilibrium point with or without government intervening, there is no way to make everyone satisfied.