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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Want to echo yr comments about Kling/Schulz -- just a super book that hits all the notes that an economically illiterate and hyperpoliticized press/media never hits. One of the few books that I have purchased in an airport that paid for itself in intellectual enjoyment. Lucid, incisive, and one of the best compendiums of thel best thinking that I have seen.
Re health insurance: vp level multiple startup experience, close to negotiations as COO. Echo all that H. writes and add that cos. were consciously competitive == it was in the out years that you had to watch them and talk to others. But that was no problem. They (ALL of them) came to you. Incessantly and it was not that difficult to get better deals every year if desired, but main obstacle was stability of employee situations under this or that policy. So, i. cos. had this leverage. Interesting.
I think he's right that employer bundled health insurance does respond to incentives to satisfy employees. However:
1. Individuals buying insurance may be even more responsive to these incentives.
2. Insurance doesnt really make sense to bundle with employment. In the case of the restaurant, I consume all those things simultaneously. I don't continue to consume the decor when I get home, for instance. But people still get ill when they're not employed, despite most temporarily unemployed people not on medicaid being able to afford to keep paying for their insurance.
3. Corrollary to 2., it seems the best way to avoid people ending up uninsurable is to start policies early and keep them for life, so that the risks of contracting some incurable, debilitating disease as still risks and not certainties, and that the cost of them can be spread around.
It is not the bundling that causes the problems, but the combination of bundling and tax policy. Given the choice of paying cash for most of our healthcare with only emergencies covered by insurance and the full coverage plans that most people have today it would be hard for the full coverage plans to justify their existence. When you change the rules to say that anything that is covered by your employer based plan is tax deductible and anything you do on your own is taxable, it makes sense to include as much as possible in your plan. Eventually as taxes and medical costs rise, we end up with the mess we have today. The ones that really get hurt are the self-employed or those employed by small companies that cannot afford insurance. This is one more unintended consequence of well meaning government action.
Gary Rogers hit the nail on the head. If there's a justification for bundling health insurance with jobs, whatever it is, let is stand on it's own without tax breaks.
Why don't we just bundle everything with employment? Shelter, food, water, air. Markets do it all the time!