Consumer Choice in Health Care

I've been reading, for the past 2 days, all the lefty bloggers tut-tutting about the Rand survey that studied medical care that a group of seniors was getting. Now, I admit that the results of the test were pretty damning (the patients rated their care higher than the quality it actually was). But, it still didn't sit right with me. I don't think a third party can determine what I like better than I can. Let's call this the Totino's pizza corollary. I like the $1.50 Totino's frozen pizzas better than I like the $5.99 Digiorno frozen pizza. I'm sure that in a taste test among 250 of the top pizza experts the Digiorno pizza would come out a huge winner. But for me, I like the crisp crust and the ratio of sauce to cheese on the Totino's (for those that haven't had the pleasure, Totinos doesn't have a lot of cheese). Does the fact that the experts would agree that Digiorno is better invalidate my opinion? I would argue, no.

Greg Mankiw takes my Totino's Corollary to new territory today;

What if the quality of the health care were judged not by the consumer but instead by an employee of the postal system? Or, worse, by a random member of Congress, while he was running for reelection and accepting campaign contributions from a variety of health-care providers? Yes, decision making in health care is hard, so mistakes are inevitable. But is there any reason to think that collectivized decision making is usually better than individual decision making?

Granted, my Totino's Corollary certainly makes light of educated health care opinion, but I also believe that a medical treatment that the consumer believes in has a much better chance of succeeding than one which is foisted upon them when they have very little choice in the manner. Especially a treatment that is determined by what would be a gigantic bureaucracy that kowtows to political interests.