Surrounding the passage of federal law that requires Americans to purchase healthcare, many serious questions about the nature of the healthcare industry have been brought into the great forums of public discourse. Among the issues raised, some have questioned whether health care is a commodity. Relatedly, are health services properly subject to the natural forces of a free market, and would this even be practical? Or, are there concerns which make markets inhospitable to healthcare?

Some have argued that with the issue of healthcare we face certain demands of morality which markets cannot satisfy. For instance, some consider it a moral demand that individuals are not denied care of the basis of preexisting conditions. Therefore, we are obligated to enforce government mandated healthcare.

In “Health Care and the Profit Motive,” Avik Roy argues that there is a moral side of the health care issue but that not only is a private health care market possible but is perhaps best equipped to satisfy the dictates of conscience. Roy analyzes the reasons why the current health care system is unsatisfactory, to which both an unalloyed consumer-driven system as well as a government mandated system are posed as solutions. Roy responds to critics in order to show that a health care market is a real possibility. He concludes that though health care has a moral side it is a consumer-driven system that might offer the greatest advantage.