What follows is an edited transcript of my discussion with Ray March about the economics of medicine and health insurance. We had a fascinating and far-reaching discussion about health care policy, both in the United States and Canada, as well as some cases of entrepreneurship in the medical sector.
This includes a slightly awkward discussion of the development of sexual pharmacology, the early experiments with nitrates and Viagra, and the, uhhh, “firmness” those drugs produce. Enjoy!
Petersen: My guest today is Ray March of Texas Tech University. Ray, welcome to Economics Detective Radio.
March: Thanks for having me.
Petersen: So our topic today is the economics of medicine. Ray’s research concerns entrepreneurship and regulation in medicine. Let’s start by talking about this idea of entrepreneurship in medicine.
The medical field isn’t like Silicon Valley. You can’t just launch a pharmaceutical company out of your parents’ garage. In fact, the whole field is tightly regulated and controlled by the government both in the United States and Canada, other countries. So how do people in the medical field still manage to be entrepreneurial?
March: Entrepreneurship is fundamentally a question about how do I find resources I have now and put them towards their best use and that will help me turn a profit and therefore we have market signals. You’re right to point out medicine is a much more regulated area compared to other service industries but what makes medicine entrepreneurial is that there’s always a void to discover, there’s always a need to find better uses and better cures or better ways to treat patients. (more…)
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