“Our healthcare system’s too expensive, too dehumanized, too technically complicated and not sufficiently patient centered,” said Dr. Timothy Lane, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and former chief of Moses Cone Memorial Hospital’s internal medicine program. “We’re in enormous disarray.”

He described two poles of thought in healthcare delivery, leaving little doubt which one he favored.

One philosophical school views healthcare as a capitalistic good to be traded on the open market, Lane suggested, while the other describes it as a social good, guaranteed to all. Capitalist healthcare is based on the premise that when consumers have sufficient knowledge they are able to make rational decisions in weighing price against quality in the selection of options. Because of the urgency of personal healthcare needs and the complexity of medical practices, he proposed, consumers rarely have enough information to make timely and intelligent decisions about their healthcare

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