Obama Care and Torrey Pines Tee Times
Most everyone knows that Torrey Pines stands as one of the most magnificent golf courses in the world. Nestled against the Pacific shores of La Jolla, California, it offers unmatched cliff-side vistas—a golfer’s dream, and sparkles as the sight of the Buick Open each year. It also stands out as a public course with exceptionally low greens fees (e.g. for you non-golfers, cost to play).
How do free markets react to exceptional values at artificially low prices? Excess demand, of course. Torrey Pines attempted deal with this by limiting advance tee times, meaning that golfers wishing to pay could not schedule a playing time in advance. Instead, it required the golfer to come in several hours in advance, huddle in the dim, cold morning fog, and wait in turn for the chance to secure, after a wait of several hours, one of the prized tee times for the day, with no guarantees.
A frightful system? Yes. However, free market forces, like Marvel comic super heroes, mercifully intervened. A secondary market emerged. The unemployed, underemployed, or the merely adventurous entrepreneur, could stand in line for others, secure the “golden ticket” tee time, and then sell the ticket to a broker. The end user golfer purchased the ticket from a broker, paying full market value for the tee time, but getting to play the fabulous course on the day, and at the time, that he needed. The entrepreneur, the broker, and the end user golfer all came out ahead. Free enterprise at its best!
Alas, our story offers no happy ending. Sadly, the California State Parks Department took exception to our happy little enterprise zone. It secured illegal status for the brokering, scattered the entrepreneurs, and limited the allowance of out-of-county tee times to five per day. The result? A windfall for local residents, a requirement to sign up for tee times as much as six months in advance for everyone else, meaning no golf at all for most eager duffers, due to limits of time and scheduling.
Medical care, like golf, by its nature possesses even more stringent limits on time and scheduling. As John Maynard Keynes accurately stated, “In the long run, we are all dead.” Healthy competition between insurance companies or health care providers for your dollars seems most likely to secure an efficient allocation of health resources. Government control of the economics of medical care likely will fare no better than its regulation of Torrey Pines tee times. Enjoy your Obama Care; just don’t get sick.
Copyright 2010 –David J. Carr