Martin Gaynor knows a thing or two about the United Kingdom. He knows what it's like to be in the midst of a boisterous crowd of cricket fans. He knows how it feels to walk in the shadow of Big Ben. And he knows what happens when there's a monopoly among providers of healthcare services in England.
The E.J. Barone Professor of Economics and Health Policy at Carnegie Mellon, Gaynor has become something of an expert on how competition impacts England's nationalized healthcare system. Together with two colleagues from Imperial College London, Gaynor researched the effect on mortality by the 2006 reforms to the National Health Service (which increased competition among hospitals). The resulting paper concluded that patients going to hospitals facing more competition had lower mortality rates, but there was no such effect for patients going to hospitals that didn't have competition.
"Competition saves lives, and monopoly kills," Gaynor says simply.
The findings caught the attention of the British National Health Service's Co-Operation & Competition Panel. The members recently appointed Gaynor to their economics reference group, which is charged with providing advice to the panel on economic and competition policy. Gaynor is one of only two Americans appointed to the group. The panel, in turn, applies the consumer protection and antitrust laws for the country's healthcare system.
-Elizabeth May
