Free Market Medicine

David Henderson explains:

I was driving and so my wife got on the iPad and did a Google search. What came up was a site called “Just Answer.” She clicked on the link for “Doctors and Nurses” and registered. She had two choices: (1) pay $24 and wait who knows how long for an answer or (2) pay $38 for an expedited answer. We were concerned enough that she did the latter. She keyed in her symptoms and some of her medical history. About an hour later, a specialist — a neurologist — was on her case and she and I my wife went back and forth on a “chat” feature on the site that also allowed my wife to “save” the conversation. Bottom line: deal with the symptoms while we were in Santa Barbara for a week and then get some blood tests when she returned. My guess is that she would have gotten a similar response from Doctors on Duty or Urgent Care. But we would have been slowed down, we would have paid a multiple of the $38, and we wouldn’t have had a specialist.