Arnold Kling

Single-payer Health Care?

Arnold Kling, Great Questions of Economics
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Megan McArdle uses an article by Jane Bryant Quinn as a jumping-off point for making the rarely-heard case against government involvement in health care. Discussing the idea of "single-payer" health insurance (meaning that the government would consolidate the health insurance industry into a single payer), McArdle says,

I think that this may be the first time I've ever heard an apparently otherwise reasonable human being argue that the way to slim down bureacracy is to hand a project over to the government. Has anyone ever heard of any situation in which this was the case?

Discussion Question. The government gives the tax subsidy for health care to employers, not to individuals. How many ways does this distort the way the health care economy?

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