ARNOLD KLING
August 14, 2011
The Top Political Contributors
August 11, 2011
Gender and the New Commanding Heights
August 11, 2011
Jamie Galbraith Makes an Assumption
August 11, 2011
Macroeconometrics: The Science of Hubris
August 10, 2011
Real and Nominal Bond Yields
BRYAN CAPLAN
August 14, 2011
The Effect of Thumb Sucking on Income
August 12, 2011
The Voice of Cold, Hard Truth to All Would-Be Educators
August 12, 2011
Ability, Morality, and Prosperity: A Paper and a Report
August 11, 2011
The Theory of Time and Frittering
August 10, 2011
Male Variance and the Remnants of the Gender Gap
DAVID HENDERSON
August 9, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken", Part Two
August 8, 2011
Hayek in "Unbroken"
August 5, 2011
James Bovard on the Peace Corps
August 4, 2011
Summers Way Off on FDR and 1941
August 3, 2011
The "Amazon" Tax
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I totally agree with Alex on this point. Use of existing technologies when said technologies are woefully inadequate is very cost ineffective as the development of new technologies.
Over 30 years ago Lewis Thomas made the argument in his Lives Of A Cell book that diseases that have no effective treatment are very expensive to treat and that diseases that have effective treatments are cheap to treat. He cited the example of TB where sick people used to be kept for long periods of time in sanitariums at enormous expense but that the drugs that cured TB were incredibly cheap and worked very rapidly. I think this argument is correct.
I would argue a further point: funding researchers to use existing tools to investigate diseases and to develop treatments is not as effective as spending the money on the development of new forms of instrumentation and assays that let biological systems to be taken apart and figured out more quickly.
Either US healthcare is lacking productivity, or its resources are wasted on people that don't really need them. Despite having the highes spending in the world, results in terms of low infant mortality are mediocre, to say the least:
http://blogofpandora.blogspot.com/2003_09_01_blogofpandora_archive.html#106313163627799020
Hmmm...is it true on the margin? I guess it depends on whether or not you think the economy is competitive, no?
Matz, The infant mortality rate is a function of a great many things that health care providers have no control over.
Spending on the margin always depends on the commitment of capital. Medical research always have the edge, when an essentially cheaper treatment process can be devised. The equation changes when the treatment process requires a greater expenditures of capital resources. Is a Heart Transplant really an effective treatment, when it requires sixteen hours in a surgical room, at $8000 per hour rental for the room alone? lgl
Medical research undoubtedly has a high economic productivity...but it is meaningless to compare total benefits of X with total government research expenditures of Y. Very large amounts of medical research are done by corporations and by foundations and universities with private endowments.
>>Either US healthcare is lacking productivity, or its resources are wasted on people that don't really need them. Despite having the highes spending in the world, results in terms of low infant mortality are mediocre, to say the least:
Right, which makes you question the wisdom of various plans to reign in health care "costs". I get the impression many politicians see health care expenditures as costs that need to be controlled. The problem is that the people purchasing these goods and services might heartily disagree.
I have yet to see any decent explanation as to why universal health care would reduce the rate of increase in the cost of health care and expenditures in health care.
Quote lgl...
> Is a Heart Transplant really an effective treatment, when it requires sixteen hours in a surgical room, at $8000 per hour rental for the room alone?