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Economics of Health Care
A Category Archive (536 entries)
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February 8, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
If I were a Republican, I would use any health care summit to set the following conditions for agreeing to support a bipartisan health plan. 1. All Medicare savings must be used to shore up Medicare. None of those savings... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
In a post a few weeks ago, I stated that I had coined a term in 1994 to describe the effects of a ban on pre-existing conditions clauses in health insurance: adverse selection by law. This weekend, I was going... MORE
February 4, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen ruminates over Medicare vouchers. He also links to ruminations by Ross Douthat. In my view, the question is not whether you like vouchers are not. Vouchers are inevitable, given the alternatives. Alternative 1 is to keep what we... MORE
February 1, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
1. Leemore Dafny, Katherine Ho and Mauricio Varela write, We estimate that employees would be willing to forego 10 to 40 percent or more of their employer subsidies for the right to apply those subsidies to the plan of their... MORE
January 22, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Krugman's latest op-ed brings back fond memories of the thinker he used to be. As David Henderson points out, Krugman plainly admits that insurance regulation makes the adverse selection problem worse: Suppose, for example, that Congress took the advice of... MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Michael Mandel writes, It's good to see a book which focuses on this topic, whether the authors call it innovation economics or Economics 2.0 or something else. We need more of this kind of thinking. My guess is that Michael... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Finally, Krugman admits the problem with a ban on pre-existing conditions clauses in health insurance. From Paul Krugman's column today: Suppose, for example, that Congress took the advice of those who want to ban insurance discrimination on the basis of... MORE
January 20, 2010
Here's what Megan McArdle advocated today: eliminate the tax-deductibiity of health insurance benefits for people making more than $150K a year in household income, $100K for singles. So now imagine that you're a married person with a family and you're... MORE
January 14, 2010
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My review of bio-ethicist Daniel Callahan's new book, Taming the Beloved Beast: How Medical Technology Costs Are Destroying Our Health Care System, was posted on-line yesterday. In it, Callahan advocates rationing health care to the elderly, not allowing them to... MORE
January 13, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Cato's Michael Cannon warns, Over smaller ranges of earned income, the legislation would impose effective marginal tax rates that exceed 100 percent. Families of four would see effective marginal tax rates as high as 174 percent under the Senate bill... MORE
January 12, 2010
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Jonathan Gruber has gotten some negative press for not revealing that he received substantial payments from the Obama Administration while also writing a Washington Post article favoring Obama's proposed government interventions in medical care. The main thing I would add... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Gruber is under fire for failing to disclose to reporters the funds he received from the government to investigagte health care reform. This story reports, That puts the total federal money Gruber received in the last two years at... MORE
January 6, 2010
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
In the U.S., the all-inclusive cost of a surrogate pregnancy usually exceeds $75,000. Since insurance won't cover much if any of these expenses, most people who hire an American surrogate are fairly well-off. Fortunately, there's a much cheaper option: Do... MORE
January 3, 2010
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Between 1988 and 2000, life expectancy for cancer patients increased by roughly four years, and the average willingness-to-pay for these survival gains was roughly $322,000. Improvements in cancer survival during this period created 23 million additional life-years and roughly $1.9... MORE
December 26, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Can someone help me make heads or tails out of this piece on the Senate bill? Key claims to reconcile:1. Demand for health insurance is going way up:Health insurers get some big presents in the Senate's health overhaul bill --... MORE
December 25, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes:I know I had another argument with Bryan this year where I had to concede to him, but right now I cannot remember the topic. Selective memory strikes again.I'm happy to help out. The history of the dispute:1. Arnold... MORE
December 24, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
My favorite passage from Ezra Klein's pro-Senate bill blogging:Someone who puts off purchasing coverage and then tries to buy Aetna's plan the first time they collapse unexpectedly will not be sold a plan...Under reform, these people get the chance to... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
When I explain the antitrust laws to my Industrial Organization students, I begin with the Fable of the Martian. Suppose you're driving 66 miles per hour in a 55 mph zone with a fresh-off-the-spaceship Martian passenger. No one in sight... MORE
December 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
A while back, I wrote:Yes, health insurance is bundled with jobs. But markets bundle lots of products, and I see no evidence that this bundling undermines reputational incentives in the least. Think about a typical restaurant. It bundles many kinds... MORE
December 15, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Steven Landsburg writes, My gut instincts point me in a different direction that Professor Cutler's do, but I think we agree on what the big problems are and on what would count as solutions. I think almost all economists would... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
There is one question in the Roper-AP survey where I wonder if the American public is more perceptive than pro-Obama economists. The question: "If the government makes these changes to health insurance [i.e., extending coverage], would that probably cause you... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
One of my favorite passages in The Myth of the Rational Voter argues that economists should often support markets even when they aren't working very well. Why? Because in the real world, government habitually make genuine market failures worse in... MORE
December 14, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Today's lead unsigned editorial on health care in the Wall Street Journal is one of the best they have run. One good paragraph: They might have piped up earlier: What they're finally admitting is that all the grandiose talk about... MORE
December 13, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen recommends an article that interviews health information technology CEO Jonathan Bush. I concur in the recommendation. Read the whole thing.... MORE
December 9, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Matt Welch writes, In France, by contrast, you walk to the corner pharmacist, get either a prescription or over-the-counter medication right away, shell out a dozen or so euros, and you're done. If you need a doctor, it's not hard... MORE
December 8, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Tomorrow morning, Robin Hanson is chairing a very interesting dissertation defense:One part finds that US firms that self-insure, thereby avoiding many health insurance regulations, spend 18-25% more per employee on medicine...The take-away:For those who think med is great, this seems... MORE
December 7, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Atul Gawande says something I believe to be true and something I believe to be false. What I believe to be true: To figure out how to transform medical communities, with all their diversity and complexity, is going to involve... MORE
November 24, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
At least according to the Handbook of Exposure Therapies, exposure is the most effective treatment for anxiety, OCD, post-traumatic stress, and similar problems. But most therapists don't use it. If you're a health economist, it's only natural to wonder why. ... MORE
November 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Sherry Glied, Ashwin Prabhu, and Norman Edelman do not think so. The value of physicians' underlying human capital is estimated by forecasting an age-earnings profile for doctors based on the characteristics in youth of NLSY cohort participants who subsequently became... MORE
November 17, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle writes, When you increase the demand for something without increasing the supply, you either get price increases, or shortages. Neither is what the authors are promising for their bills. She is referring, of course, to health care legislation,... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen offers his, which strikes me as overly complicated. The bill I would propose would be one that encourages experimentation at the state level. Offer to support an experiment that allows an individual state to adopt single-payer, while allowing... MORE
November 12, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Gene Steuerle writes, Here is the bottom line on how employers and employees together can maximize what they get from government. Many employers who don't provide insurance today will probably just choose to pay the tax ($400-per-employee under one scenario... MORE
November 11, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
An excellent news story in today's New York Times highlights the problems with government regulation of health insurance in Maine, problems that, the reporter notes, would likely occur if the U.S. Senate's and the U.S. House of Representatives' versions of... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The most important political fact affecting health care reform is the sizable Democratic majority. There are too many Democrats in the House and Senate for a bipartisan bill to make sense. Given that we are going to have a partisan... MORE
November 10, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Various pundits offer suggestions for controlling health care costs, hosted by the New York Times. My proposal (health care vouchers) has zero chance of being enacted. You may not like it, anyway. The other pundits' proposals, even if they were... MORE
November 5, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My student, Mike Williams, sent me the following last night: I don't know if you watch Law and Order Special Victims Unit but they had a rather frustrating take on the pharmacutical companies tonight. In the episode one of their... MORE
November 2, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
That was the title of a famous article claiming that U.S. Health care spending is high because provider charges are excessive. Now, Ezra Klein (pointer from Tyler Cowen) brandishes charts furnished by an insurance industry trade group that purport to... MORE
October 29, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Steven Landsburg is now blogging. One of his first posts is on health reform. Concerning the public option, he writes, A more efficient bureaucracy? But if there were a way to save money by streamlining the bureacracy, why wouldn't all... MORE
October 26, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
The congressional leadership has been very vocal lately about the need for competition in health insurance. These are people who have previously never had a good word to say about "competition" in their entire political careers. They are the very... MORE
October 25, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Hey, it's baseball playoff time and the article is in the New York Times and so of course I'm going to use a baseball metaphor. In his column today, Tyler Cowen addresses many of the problems with having government mandated... MORE
October 23, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In The Freeman, I write, Overall, I would argue that on the demand side, the United States healthcare system is essentially socialized. The fact is that close to 90 percent of health-care spending is paid for by third parties, which... MORE
October 18, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
From President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, "The Economic Case for Health Reform," June 2009: In medicine, however, technological progress in recent decades has been almost exclusively cost-increasing, without generating a commensurate increase in value. Undoubtedly, provider incentives, which largely... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Back in July, Bryan had an excellent post on adverse selection, pointing out that the textbook idea that adverse selection is an important problem in insurance is simply wrong. Krugman seemed to go back and forth on the issue, but... MORE
October 15, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports, An internal industry study released earlier this week found that the Senate reform bill would cause premiums to rise sharply, but the report's findings have been widely disputed... Pelosi said the House may adopt a Senate... MORE
October 14, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
In arguing with the recent study done by Price Waterhouse Coopers for the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the White House bloggers say the following: AHIP CLAIM: Fees on health insurance providers, pharmaceutical manufactures and device makers will be passed... MORE
October 11, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Hazel Fenton, from East Sussex, is alive nine months after medics ruled she had only days to live, withdrew her antibiotics and denied her artificial feeding. The former school matron had been placed on a controversial care plan intended to... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
The doctor then takes a history and physical, spending about 30 minutes with me, for which the flat fee is $50. He explains his hourly billing is $100-much less than a typical lawyer charges, I'm happy to note. He tells... MORE
October 8, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
1. The "score" of the Baucus bill as not adding to the deficit is far too generous. CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf writes, The projected savings for the proposal reflect the cumulative impact of a number of specifications that would constrain... MORE
October 7, 2009
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
David Harsanyi improves on David Broooks. Mr. Hoover knows everything. He attended a high-brow graduate school and worked as a Senate aide before becoming a policy expert. (He even pretends to understand Jeremy Bentham.) He is a man who craves... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
When Gandhi told us, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world," I can only assume he was talking about reputational incentives in the health insurance industry. So I thought I should finish my "Punk'd by... MORE
October 4, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I finished my Punk'd post with this:Question for Krugman: If our insurer wasn't extremely concerned about its reputation, why would they let a low-level functionary fix a $5k error in the company's favor after a single phone call?In the comments,... MORE
October 3, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Back in August, Paul Krugman accused me of living in "an alternative universe in which insurance companies would never, never treat their clients badly, because that would hurt their reputations." Of course, what I really said is that even when... MORE
October 1, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On Tuesday, October 6th, I will be speaking at Indiana University. The time is 1PM. The location is the SPEA Atrium--I guess if you are familiar with the university, you know where that is. My topic will be health care... MORE
September 25, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Strange as it may seem, Scandinavia now has free-market admirers, most notably Will Wilkinson and especially Scott Sumner. The heart of their case: If you ignore their welfare states, Denmark has one of the freest economies in the world, and... MORE
September 24, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
"The plural of anecdote is data." (attributed to George Stigler) My wife had breast cancer in 1986 and is an active consumer of information about breast cancer. A few days ago she gave me a link to a web site... MORE
September 20, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He seems to accept my diagnosis. The average health-care coverage for the average family now costs $13,375, according to Kaiser... About 160 million Americans receive health coverage through their employers. In general, the employer picks up 73 percent of the... MORE
September 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
In the spring of this year, President Obama argued that one reason for health care reform was to get long-term spending on government health care under control. As he recognized and as every scholar and analyst who has studied future... MORE
September 17, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A British reader forwarded this. Note that in order to get life-saving treatment, the boy apparently must go to the U.S. Overall, I am not a huge fan of our health care system, but one thing that I suspect that... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Of the following statements made by President Obama in his speech on health reform last week, which is not true? Answer below the fold. a) "if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance... MORE
September 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Today's Wall Street Journal contains an interesting front-page news story about mandated health insurance, focusing on the case of Massachusetts. When Mitt Romney was governor, he pushed through a mandate, with subsidies for low-income people to buy it and taxes... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Suppose it were legally safe for a private insurer to offer death panels - presumably after talking to marketing to get a better name. (By "legally safe" I mean not just the absence of contrary regulation, but a strong expectation... MORE
September 11, 2009
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Keith Hennessey has an interesting question. What thought leader most clearly and effectively presents points of view with which you frequently strongly disagree? He proposes that awards be given. Would Tyrone be considered eligible? Presumably, my nominees have to be... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
They come from Richard A. Cooper, a physician (not to be confused with Richard Cooper, the specialist in international economics). Orszag has argued that if Medicare spending could be as low in Newark as it is at Mayo, the nation... MORE
September 10, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Three commenters on my post last night (ed, mark, and Karl Smith) pointed out, correctly, it turns out, that I missed Obama's point. I accused him of contradicting himself by claiming that he wouldn't put any government funds into the... MORE
September 9, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Here are two segments of Obama's speech this evening. They were within two paragraphs of each other: Despite all this, the insurance companies and their allies don't like this idea. They argue that these private companies can't fairly compete with... MORE
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Even Google didn't believe it. After Pfizer's $2.3 billion settlement with the Food and Drug Administration was announced, if you were to search for the words "Pfizer 2.3 billion legal settlement," Google responded with, "Did you mean: Pfizer 2.3 million... MORE
September 8, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Michael Mandel writes, The employment report shows that private sector employment in August 2009 was lower than it was in August 1999 Of course, August of 1999 was near the peak of the dotcom boom, and August of 2009 is... MORE
September 3, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Gruber writes, Liberals are right that fundamental cost control can only come from the supply side. Consumers are poor and ineffective shoppers in the medical arena. Ultimately, they will do what their doctors tell them to do. ...But here... MORE
September 2, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
His article would be self-recommending, except that Tyler uses that expression to mean something that he has not yet read. I have read Fogel's piece. He writes about rising health care expenditures, The main factor is that the long-term income... MORE
August 30, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Canadian Defender of Medicare Admits that Waiting Lists in Canada are Long Early this morning (PDT), C-SPAN carried an interesting interview and call-in show with Dr. Ouelett, outgoing president of the Canadian Medical Association. Although Ouelett defended Medicare, Canada's system... MORE
August 28, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Not my father: David Goldhill's father. In this stemwinder, Goldhill goes through some of the wacky incentives with which our health care system is laced. The title is somewhat misleading: although he does establish that American health care killed his... MORE
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Many of these links come from the indispensable Mark Thoma. First, we have Gender and banking: Are women better loan officers? by Thorsten Beck and others. And yes, it does strengthen my priors. The Fed's profits are turning higher. Perhaps... MORE
August 27, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Arnold is worried about economists who would "[t]ry to deal with health care costs by setting health care provider compensation policy in Washington." I'm not quite sure what Arnold has in mind here. But when the typical person makes this... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Bryan writes, Contrary to Arnold, I think it would be a vast improvement over the status quo. I've talked to plenty of left-wing economists about this topic. On balance, their views are much more reasonable than the median non-economist's. The... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Arnold writes:On health care, the irrational public--the ones that want government to keep its hands off their Medicare--is helping to fight the Progressives who want to impose a health plan that is based on what I see as a failed... MORE
August 26, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jeff Miron explains, Medicare should be reduced or eliminated. Opposing government health insurance by defending government health insurance is disingenuous, at best, and utlimately counterproductive. Read the whole thing. Meanwhile, Nick Gillespie writes about the late Massachusetts Senator, In an... MORE
August 21, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Usually, my blog posts have a policy point to them, implicit or explicit. This one doesn't. It's straight reporting on something that I found interesting. Yesterday, I was on a media conference call in which the speakers were Roger Hickey... MORE
August 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, It seems to me that you are saying two different things about healthcare: 1) the way we think about health care and paying for it is out of whack. 2) the government is not (is not going to... MORE
August 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Goldhill makes a lot of the points that I have been making. Two excerpts: But fundamentally, the "comprehensive" reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system--insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care... MORE
August 12, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
John Mackey on free-market health care reform; Alex Tabarrok on consumer-driven health plans; and Ken Rogoff that the financial crisis was more than just a loss of confidence.... MORE
August 9, 2009
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma highlights a story that I had missed--a bargain between the pharmaceutical industry and the Obama Administration on health care reform.... MORE
August 5, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Here are my thoughts on the role of reputation in health insurance markets, a topic that Bryan has raised. I think that reputation matters when exit matters. That is, if people will switch suppliers based on word of mouth, then... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
It's working, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a non-partisan think tank that consistently advocates higher government spending and taxes in Massachusetts. From a base of $1.04 billion in fiscal 2006, the state is projected to spend $1.75 billion on... MORE
August 4, 2009
Monetary Policy
Arnold Kling
I've been away, mostly in Prague (where the big economic question is why so many older buildings have so many fancy details. My answer is that there must have been a very unequal distribution of wealth, so that rich folks... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Here's a view Krugman attributes to me:Of course, there's also an alternative universe in which insurance companies would never, never treat their clients badly, because that would hurt their reputations.Here's what I explicitly said in my original piece on insurance... MORE
August 2, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Matt Yglesias and Paul Krugman weigh in on interpreting life expectancy statistics across the U.S. and the Netherlands. The fact under consideration, from a few days ago, is that the U.S. has low life expectancy overall but... MORE
August 1, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Reader Hume asked: What is (are) the definitive free market health care book(s)? Thanks for any recommendations. "Definitive" is tough. It's hard to be definitive in one book. And the ones I recommend are not entirely pro-free market. But these... MORE
July 29, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ronald Bailey writes, The health care "reform" currently being hammered out by the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives already clocks in at $1 trillion and 1,000 pages--and it's nowhere near done. But one thing is clear: the legislation... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
One of the most appealing arguments for government health insurance is the perception that it's "a sure thing." No matter how powerful reputational incentives are, a private health insurance might go out of business, or fall into the hands of... MORE
July 28, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Not long ago, Krugman chided economists like Mankiw for overlooking moral hazard and adverse selection, the supposedly insuperable textbook barriers to free-market health insurance. I objected:As long as rates are legally allowed to reflect risk, there is a lot of... MORE
July 27, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
"Bad move on my part" In a September 2008 debate on health care, Paul Krugman asks a question of the audience and gets a surprising answer. I won't ruin the suspense. Just watch this 30-second segment. Given my experience with... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Here's an argument even I've found seductively appealing:The problem with free-market health insurance is that if a customer develops a truly serious health problem, his insurance company will try very hard to weasel out of the contract. At best they'll... MORE
July 23, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Somehow I missed this when it came out Monday. Here's what James C. Capretta reported about Obama's amazing power grab: Today, the Obama administration delivered one of the more remarkable presidential power grabs seen in recent memory (the transmittal letter... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Breaking Bad is a show about a terminally ill high school chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth to build up a bequest for his family. You see a lot about the economics of drug prohibition in the show, but you're... MORE
July 22, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
I received an e-mail from a student of mine and thought it would be worth answering for others as well as him. He wrote: Here are the two sides that I see on tort reform. 1. It is an attempt... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
First, read Robin and Bryan on the issue. My thoughts: 1. I do not think that the economic differences between health care and other goods are as fundamental as the difference between the believers in Expertism and the believers in... MORE
July 21, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Dana Milbank thinks that he has found a "ventriloquist" providing GOP talking points on health care. Castellanos used the word "experiment" six times to criticize Obama's plan; Steele, the eager pupil, used it 30. Only one thing would have made... MORE
July 20, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
As far as I can tell, economists are even more sympathetic to socialized medicine than laymen. The question that sticks in my mind is: Why? Economists are normally calm and analytical. When it comes to government provision of health care,... MORE
July 18, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From the Boston Globe. The 10-member commission, which includes key legislators and members of Governor Deval Patrick's administration, voted unanimously to largely scrap the current system, in which insurers typically pay doctors and hospitals a negotiated fee for each individual... MORE
July 17, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes that in order to cite the CBO criticism of the Democrats' health care reform proposals, one must do some combination of the following: a) Support, as the CBO says you should, the eradication of the tax exclusion that... MORE
July 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Doug Elmendorf tries to speak truth to power Instead of saving the federal government from fiscal catastrophe, the health reform measures being drafted by congressional Democrats would increase rather than reduce public spending on health care, potentially worsening an already... MORE
July 14, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Both Tyler and Megan are excited by a recent piece by Andrew Biggs that supposedly "seriously undercuts one of the major conservative arguments about health care: that the main problem is consumers who don't bear their own costs." Biggs' shows... MORE
July 13, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Andrew Biggs writes, The chart below shows spending on veterinary care, which I pulled from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, and national health expenditures (for people) from the National Income and Product Accounts. Two things are interesting here: first, the rate... MORE
July 9, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Here's an excerpt from my chapter, "Free and Healthy at Half the Cost," in The Joy of Freedom: An Economist's Odyssey. I was writing about the single-payer health care system in my native Canada. It's hard to say that the... MORE
July 8, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt talks about the real issue in health care spending (it's not administrative costs). Tyler Cowen calls the column "superb." I would give it no more than a B, because the question is posed in terms of which centralized... MORE
July 7, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Do we want to eliminate the middle man in the health care industry? I do, but what I want to see is consumers pay providers directly. More thoughts: [UPDATE: see also Ezra Klein, who agrees with me that a lot... MORE
July 2, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Over at U.S. News and World Report, Matt Bandyk has a follow-up question for my last post on mandatory insurance and adverse selection:Here's my question to Dr. Caplan: But far from being populist anti-intellectualism, isn't the objection that "poor people... MORE
June 29, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My co-blogger Bryan Caplan comments today on Paul Krugman's blog post on Arrow's famous 1963 article on health insurance. There is more to be said. Krugman writes: Both George Will and Greg Mankiw basically argue that we don't need a... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
In a recent post on health care, Krugman writes:[E]conomists have known for 45 years -- ever since Kenneth Arrow's seminal paper -- that the standard competitive market model just doesn't work for health care: adverse selection and moral hazard are... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
There is a disconnect in the Obama administration's rhetoric on health care. On the one hand, the administration points out that our current health care financing system, particularly for government-funded programs, is unsustainable. This suggests an urgent need for... MORE
June 25, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin and David Cutler write, There are health care institutions that have spent large sums on health IT with zero or even negative returns; some health IT reforms made matters worse and had to be uninstalled. The reason... MORE
June 24, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I argue, The debate we should be having is over whether restraint in our use of medical services should be initiated by government officials or left to consumers. The Democrats want to avoid that debate. Instead, they make it sound... MORE
June 23, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Ezra Klein writes: The [U.S. health care] system is currently biased toward the worst form of cost control: rationing by income. Every year, we contain costs by quietly letting 2 million or so more people fall into the ranks of... MORE
June 22, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Paul Krugman had a blog post last week that I agree with most of. (Pardon the preposition at the end of the sentence.) He criticized a bill, the Preserving Access to Targeted, Individualized, and Effective New Treatments and Services (PATIENTS)... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I've got a little toenail fungus. Now that you're done cringing in disgust, let's get to the economics. My HMO doesn't cover treatment, because the problem is "merely cosmetic." Until recently, though, I didn't care, because they're weren't any good... MORE
June 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
My wife and I watch the Fox News Channel more than any other channel. It's not because we agree with everything, or even most of what, they say. My main reasons are twofold: (1) They bring up issues that the... MORE
June 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Dean Baker correctly takes to task people who claim that the estimated average cost of covering the uninsured with Obama's proposal is a whopping $62,500. Here's his key paragraph: Republicans were quick to put the cost at $62,500 for each... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In health care reform, I have described cost controls as the spinach and expansion of coverage as the dessert. I continue to predict that the Democrats will first go for expansion of coverage in a way that alienates Republicans, and... MORE
June 15, 2009
Macroeconomics
Arnold Kling
Feel free to put constructive questions in the comments. Here are two questions that I recently received, one on health care and one on Keynesian economics. On health care, actually two questions: You asked thequestion why is health care something... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I write, We should aim to phase out employer-provided health insurance. However, instead of trying to create a household insurance market that reconstitutes the unsustainable features of employer-provided health insurance, we need to allow for radical innovation in the very... MORE
June 14, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Robin's happy that "in the NYT, Tyler Cowen dares Obama to put up or shut up." Tyler himself says:The most likely possibility is that the government will spend more on health care today, promise to realize savings tomorrow and never... MORE
June 10, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Robin's got a great graph on the HMO revolution. HMOs held health care spending as a fraction of GDP constant during most of the 90s. Nothing before or since has managed to do the same. The graph makes me wonder... MORE
June 9, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, The inclusion of a strong public insurance option has become, for most observers I know, the single most recognizable marker for victory. If the public plan exists, liberals have won. If it's eliminated, or neutered, then conservatives... MORE
June 4, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Peter Orzsag writes, McAllen's per capita expenditures grew to nearly twice the national average - driven primarily by local norms that tend towards heavier use of discretionary services - such as diagnostic testing and surgical versus less invasive interventions -... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
You can listen to me, giving what felt at the time like a good talk. Also, I recommend Keith Hennessey You cannot magically slow health spending growth without proposing policy changes that affect incentives and behavior. If the President is... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From my letter to the editor at the Washington Post: In 1960, 50 percent of personal health-care spending was paid for by patients out of pocket. Today, that figure is about 10 percent. We will never again see a patient-centered... MORE
June 2, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The President's Council of Economic Advisers writes, We estimate that slowing the annual growth rate of health care costs by 1.5 percentage points would increase real gross domestic product (GDP), relative to the no-reform baseline, by over 2 percent in... MORE
June 1, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
This month's featured article on Econlib is by health economist Linda Gorman. Gorman points out that Blue Cross was given an important tax advantage over commercial insurers early in the game and that Medicare and Medicaid were modeled on Blue... MORE
May 31, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
That's what I'll be doing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, at noon, for Cato. I have nothing new to say. The facts haven't changed, so I haven't changed my mind since I wrote Crisis of Abundance.... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
That is the title of an op-ed piece by Maya MacGuineas that is on the Washington Post web site. I didn't see it in print, because I am still not used to the way they have mixed up the Sunday... MORE
May 28, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Atul Gawande writes, many physicians are remarkably oblivious to the financial implications of their decisions. They see their patients. They make their recommendations. They send out the bills. And, as long as the numbers come out all right at the... MORE
May 27, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Last week, I was at an event in Washington, D.C. with about 20 other people--politicians, economists, journalists, and think tankers. One of the economists, Greg Mankiw, made a presentation in which he discussed the reasons for increasing health expenditures as... MORE
May 20, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Grace-Marie Turner and Joseph R. Antos write about a Republican health care proposal, The nexus of their plan is redirecting the $300 billion annual tax subsidy for employment-based health insurance to individuals in the form of refundable, advanceable tax credits.... MORE
May 15, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, This commission, if it sticks to its statistical mandate, will be able to recommend many more possible cuts than any vote-maximizing administration will be likely to make. Some other principle will be used to determine cuts. Many... MORE
May 11, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, The President is attempting to claim credit for [health care] savings that (a) do not yet exist, (b) are not backed up by any specific changes in industry practices or government policies, and (c) are related to him... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Andrew Biggs writes, Over the next 30 years, population aging is our main entitlements problem and it makes sense to seek solutions that are based on the problem we have, not the problem we want to have. Beyond 30 years,... MORE
April 29, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
from the Leonhardt interview. I don't know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she's my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to... MORE
April 27, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A podcast in which I talk about health care policy. Andrew J. Rettenmaier and Thomas R. Saving offer a proposal to control Medicare costs by encouraging higher savings along with higher co-payments and deductibles. John Goodman dissects the notion of... MORE
April 23, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Vermont Public Radio reports, [Robert] Kuttner says the first red herring about single-payer health care is that it limits choice for the patient, and if you want proof look at Medicare. Indeed, Medicare does very little to restrict patients' access... MORE
April 22, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Parents - especially moms - spend a lot of time nagging their kids to eat right, get some fresh air and exercise, not smoke, etc. If nagging changed behavior, and there is some validity to popular perceptions about "what's healthy,"... MORE
April 21, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
You can hear some of mine in this pre-debate radio interview.... MORE
April 20, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, what's the relevant distinction between health care spending and spending on airline travel? There is one and it's that so much of health care spending is people spending other people's money This is quite right. I say that... MORE
April 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
In a post last week, my fellow co-blogger, Arnold Kling, writes about Obama OMB director Peter Orszag's thoughts on controlling health care costs. I think Orszag misses an important point and so does Arnold. First, Orszag. He takes as given... MORE
April 17, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Next Thursday, I will be debating Robert Kuttner in Burlington, Vermont. To be precise, 4-5:30 p.m. on April 23 in the Grand Maple Ballroom of the Dudley H. Davis Center on the University of Vermont campus. Ezra Klein writes, The... MORE
April 14, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Peter Orszag offers a can-do outlook on controlling health care costs. The bottom line is that health care reform must be deficit neutral in the short run and deficit reducing in the long term. We have to have scoreable savings... MORE
April 13, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The issue gets discussed at Patriot's Quill. Let me offer two choices: (a) Health insurance is the collective provision of all health care. (b) Health insurance is the sharing of extreme risk in health care spending. In my view, (a)... MORE
April 10, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Keith Hennessey writes, As a policy matter, we care not about the total number of uninsured, but about the subset of that group that we think "deserves" taxpayer-subsidized health insurance. That is a judgment call that involves some value choices.... MORE
April 8, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In the comments on my health care rationing post, I received many standard attacks as being cold-hearted and willing to deny health care to people who need it. From a libertarian perspective, your generosity is reflected in what you do... MORE
April 7, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, Britain and Canada control costs in a very specific fashion: The government sets a budget for how much will be spent on healthcare that year, and the system figures out how to spend that much and no... MORE
March 30, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Guess who? proposals in his book, including a plan to scrap Medicare, Medicaid and employer-based health insurance in favor of vouchers that people could use to purchase coverage. It was not me, although I would be quite happy with those... MORE
March 29, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Keith Hennessey writes, You cannot spend $634 B on health IT, preventive care, and outcome measurement. You'll run out of things on which to spend it. Actually, you can spend that much--the recipients of the money will see to that.... MORE
March 21, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
The province of Quebec lacks a medical helicopter system, common in the United States and other parts of Canada, to airlift stricken patients to major trauma centers. Montreal's top head trauma doctor said Friday that may have played a role... MORE
February 19, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Brian Blase, my former RA, presents some edifying facts about Medicaid at National Review Online.The nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill making its way through Congress includes a little bit of everything, but if the bill passes as is, a large... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
These critics sound like me. Massachusetts members of the Physicians for a National Health Program released a report today faulting the state's experiment with health reform for failing to achieve universal coverage, being too expensive and draining funds away from... MORE
February 14, 2009
Upcoming Events
Arnold Kling
on markets and health care. I know the topic sounds boring these days, but it really is somewhat important as a public policy issue. If you work on or near Capitol Hill, feel free to drop by. Friday, February 20th,... MORE
February 3, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
My sources in Singapore inform me that a real free market in human organ donations isn't in the cards - and never was. An econ prof at a Singapore college explains:My colleagues at the ministry of health tell me that... MORE
January 28, 2009
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Cato's Caleb Brown recently recorded me in two podcasts. My thoughts on multipliers and stimulus are here (this link may be more reliable). You will also find a link to my recent podcast on co-ordinated health care (I linked to... MORE
January 26, 2009
Economic Methods
Arnold Kling
Yours truly on why the doctor needs a boss. It's about ten minutes. I start out by describing an experience I had with reincarnation. Russ Roberts and Robin Hanson discuss the search for meaning and truth. It is clear that... MORE
January 23, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Once kidney selling is legal in Singapore, will it enjoy a stampede of kidney-based tourism? I say yes: Illegal Third World kidney transactions are scary to people from the First World. So are legal kidney transactions in Iran. Singapore will... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Steven Pinker answered the call to "know thyself" by having his genome sequenced. Some results:The two biggest pieces of news I got about my disease risks were a 12.6 percent chance of getting prostate cancer before I turn 80 compared... MORE
January 16, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Last night's "30 Rock" was a riot. Some of my favorite segments: Character played by Salma Hayek: I have another patient on my off days. He's a sweet old man with advanced dementia, totally disconnected from reality. Jack: That reminds... MORE
January 13, 2009
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Michael Cannon and I make it. Patients with multiple diagnoses require someone who can organize the efforts of multiple medical professionals. It is not unreasonable to imagine that delivering health care effectively, particularly for complex patients, could require a corporate... MORE
January 5, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Do you think the government should forcibly reduce income inequality using taxes and subsidies? If so, wouldn't it follow that the government should forcibly reduce inequality in life spans? No? Then, if you answered Yes to the first question, you... MORE
January 4, 2009
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Over at marginalrevolution.com, Tyler Cowen posted a particularly good entry on famous economists' famous errors. The average quality of comments on that site is usually higher than on most economics sites, due, in no small part to Tyler's and Alex's... MORE
December 30, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I truly need a vacation from my vacation. After my kids were diagnosed with bronchitis, I decided I probably had the same ailment. I'm a member of Kaiser, but since I'm out-of-state, my only in-plan option in California was to... MORE
December 19, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezekiel Emanuel with a solution based on vouchers. I think we have to head in that direction. With vouchers, you can put a finite budget on government health care subsidies. With service reimbursement programs, like Medicare, you have an open-ended... MORE
December 16, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
A new meta-analysis in Health Psychology finds that people with more conscientious personalities live longer:Howard Friedman and Margaret Kern at the University of California at Riverside found that people who were less conscientious were 50 per cent more likely to... MORE
December 15, 2008
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
Management systems degrade. As a manager or a regulator, if you stand still you fall behind. This year, the Washington Redskins hired a new coach, Jim Zorn. They started out 6-2, but they have since lost 5 out of 6... MORE
December 6, 2008
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
I attended a Cato event at which Glen Whitman and Ezra Klein discussed health care spending. The main stylized fact is that those who spend more on health care do not necessarily get more. As Ezra puts it The evidence... MORE
November 14, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Sally Satel writes, About one in two American doctors say they prescribe placebos to their patients, and more than two-thirds believe it permissible to do so, according to a new study from the National Institutes of Health. Nortin Hadler believes... MORE
October 31, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong and David Cutler promise one, on behalf of Barack Obama. As the reforms take hold, costs will drop. As costs drop, insurance will become more affordable. Millions previously priced out of the market will be able to buy... MORE
October 27, 2008
Economics of Health Care
David Henderson
Economists often talk about Pareto-optimal moves, that is, changes in policy that make some people better off without making anyone else worse off. But we have trouble coming up with any real examples. It's an easy exercise to show that... MORE
October 19, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein highlights them. They show little difference in outcomes between genuine treatments and placebos. The implication of course is that it's far cheaper to give someone a chest incision than an angina, and far cheaper to give them a... MORE
September 16, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Cutler, Brad DeLong, and Ann Marie Marciarille write, One-third of medical costs go for services at best ineffective and at worst harmful. Fifty billion dollars will jump-start the long-overdue information revolution in health care to identify the best providers,... MORE
September 10, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Robert J. Samuelson writes, The central health-care problem is not improving coverage. It's controlling costs...Countless studies have shown that many tests, surgeries and medical devices are either ineffective or unneeded. Greater health-care spending forfeits any superior moral claim on our... MORE
September 5, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Washington Post reports, Facing a severe budget shortfall, Rhode Island officials are seeking unprecedented authority to rein in Medicaid spending in a move that has alarmed Democrats in Congress and advocates for the poor. Read the whole story. I... MORE
August 15, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Steffie Woolhandler, Benjamin Day, and David U. Himmelstein write, Meanwhile, few of the near-poor uninsured seem able to afford even the newly subsidized policies, and the federal funds providing the bulk of the subsidies are set to expire in 2008.... MORE
July 31, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He quotes a comment from David R. Henderson. I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion, after having read his site almost daily for over a year, that Tyler is not a free-market crusader. Henderson is referring to the Freddie-Fannie bailout, which... MORE
July 30, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma writes, when I think about moving P to G, I also think about moving the revenue stream with it (e.g. individuals would pay monthly premiums in taxes rather than to the insurance company). Thus, if we move all... MORE
Business Economics
Arnold Kling
1. I should have more autonomy. 2. I should be rewarded more for my own ideas that work. 3. I should be penalized less for my own ideas that fail. 4. Competition that is innovative or inexpensive is unfair. That... MORE
July 29, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, But focusing on the immediate problems brought about by tax cuts and military spending should not divert us from the more formidable problem of solving the escalating health cost problem. If Obama wins and tries to institute some... MORE
July 20, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
In an otherwise wise addendum to his latest NYT column, Tyler takes a swipe at Health Savings Accounts:By the way, I think that HSAs are ineffective as health care reform and that the so-called "right" is floundering on this issue,... MORE
July 18, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Two relatively new books that I have not read. One is by Roger Feldman. Should Medicare pay for patient expenses the way automobile insurers pay for car-repair bills? ...Medicare would pay each patient a fixed amount of money, reserving larger... MORE
July 16, 2008
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Arnold Kling
Bruno Frey writes, procedural utility has also been found to play a role in consumers' decisions. The first evidence of this was presented by Kahneman, et al., who investigated customers' reactions to a situation where the price of a good... MORE
July 10, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jane Gross writes, Looking back on the last few years of my mother’s life, ...my single biggest mistake was not finding a doctor with expertise in geriatrics to quarterback her care and attend to the quality of her life, not... MORE
July 1, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He says, Don’t be afraid of it; it’s actually the leading industry. The demands of healthcare are going to pull all other industries forward...I say if this were a privatized system, we would all say “gee it’s wonderful. All these... MORE
June 30, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
An hour-long podcast featuring Russ Roberts and me.... MORE
June 29, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports, more than 1,000 other cardiologists and hospitals have installed CT scanners like the one Dr. Rosenblatt turned down. Many are promoting heart scans to patients with radio, Internet and newspaper ads. Time magazine and Oprah... MORE
June 17, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A new essay: The autonomous, self-directed doctors produced by our medical schools are not suited to treating complex patients. Instead, what we need are team players, implementing consistent corporate policies. Independent skilled craftsmen, flying by the seat of their pants,... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ben Bernanke, who I think of as center-right, says, Per capita health-care spending in the United States has increased at a faster rate than per capita income for a number of decades. Should that trend continue, as many economists predict... MORE
June 13, 2008
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Income distribution, education, health care, and oil prices. David Henderson rushes in where few right-of-center economists dare to tread. He talks about the income distribution. The average number of earners per family for the top quintile is 2.16, almost three... MORE
May 29, 2008
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
From a web site put together by Congressman Paul Ryan, It is a real plan, with real proposals, real numbers to back them, and real legislation to implement it. Based on the analysis of government actuaries, this plan is projected... MORE
May 28, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Check out these true Monty Python-esque dialogues between a series of hospitals and a guy who wants an affordable colonoscopy. First dialogue:Conversation with Stanford Hospital: Me: My wife needs a colonoscopy: Could you give me a price on it? Stanford... MORE
May 27, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
If Michael Moore really wanted to challenge our preconceptions about health care, Sicko would have been a documentary about health care in Singapore. Nick Schulz just pointed me to a very good summary of how the system works. It's not... MORE
May 21, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Congressman Paul Ryan is the first politician I have seen with a plan that makes Medicare sustainable. The bill secures the existing Medicare program for those over 55 - so Americans can receive the benefits they planned for throughout most... MORE
April 21, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I've been a pitiful figure the last six months. My feet have been hurting so much that I practically abandoned all walking on paved surfaces. I've been teaching class sitting down. I even started wearing real shoes. Desperation drove me... MORE
March 25, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
One of Robin Hanson's greatest unpublishable papers has finally been published. "Showing That You Care: The Evolution of Health Altruism" appears in the latest issue of Medical Hypotheses. Here's Robin summarizing the paper and his decade-plus struggle to publish it.... MORE
March 24, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In Sunday's Washington Post, Jacob Hacker wrote, getting the government more involved in health care would actually reduce costs, improve quality and bolster the U.S. economy -- which helps explain why public insurance is the secret weapon in both of... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Crisis of Abundance is now in paperback, for ten bucks at Amazon. The fact that Peter Orszag, no ideological fellow-traveler of mine, sounds many similar themes indicates to me that I can feel justifiably proud of the book. Two changes... MORE
March 23, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He spoke at the Wilson School. The audio sounds bad on my computer, but he makes an important point. If health care costs are 16 percent of GDP, and we could reduce spending by 30 percent with no worse outcomes,... MORE
February 28, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Glen Whitman writes, suppose that a country currently provides everyone the same quality of health care. And then suppose the quality of health care improves for half of the population, while remaining the same (not getting any worse) for the... MORE
February 14, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
'rdan' quotes a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not. Careful analysis of the costs and benefits of specific interventions, rather... MORE
February 13, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
from Kevin Drum: But if it's price signals and competition you're after, why not cut out the middleman and have consumers pay doctors directly? For example, imagine a national healthcare plan that paid 75% of all medical expenses but required... MORE
February 12, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen waxes romantic. Let me also tell you my ideal world. Insurance companies are judged by honest third party intermediaries. Insurance companies compete like heck to make customers satisfied. Insurance companies monitor doctors, read Robin Hanson, and require evidence-based... MORE
February 4, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Gruber writes, It is useful to think about the uninsured as tuna and those who already have insurance as dolphins. The goal of environmentally conscious fishermen is to catch as many tuna as possible in their nets, while minimizing... MORE
February 1, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Called the Medicare Coordinated Care Demonstration Coordinated care services are actions taken by a Registered Nurse (RN) Care Manager to help your doctor(s) determine your care. The RN Care Manager will also check on you at regular times and help... MORE
January 31, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Shikha Dalmia writes, The state health-care bill for fiscal 2008-2009 is expected to touch $400 million -- 85% more than originally projected. Still the state won't be able to fully shield those it subsidizes from the premium increases. But uninsured... MORE
January 30, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I'm back home, a thousand miles away from my father. But he had another setback, and he is back in the main hospital. I am not expecting any miracles. I know that the clock has been ticking ever since his... MORE
January 29, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay: Medicare is wonderful for relieving the elderly from the burden of worrying about health care expenses. By the same token, it is wonderful for relieving doctors of the burden of worrying about the elderly as customers. You... MORE
January 28, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Cutler, Amy Finkelstein and Kathleen McGarry write, Standard theories of insurance, dating from Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976), stress the role of adverse selection in explaining the decision to purchase insurance. In these models, higher risk people buy full or... MORE
January 20, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Ian Ayres' Super Crunchers is full of neat material. But my favorite parts highlight the innumeracy of the medical profession. Most vivid example:[M]y partner, Jennifer, and I were expecting for the first time - back in 1994. Back then, women... MORE
January 13, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Posner writes, the uninsured are on average less rather than more healthy than the insured Gary Becker writes most of those without health insurance are young and do not have major medical expenses. Well, I suppose that the uninsured... MORE
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
The Boston Globe reports Mayor Thomas M. Menino embarked on a highly public campaign yesterday to block CVS Corp. and other retailers from opening medical clinics inside their stores, an effort that exposed a rift between Menino and the state's... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
In The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford highly praised the health care policies of Singapore. But it wasn't until I read the section on health care in Ghesquiere's Singapore's Success that I realized how amazing the official numbers are. If the... MORE
January 9, 2008
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle writes, My (partial) list of the interesting questions: 1. Is Medicare well structured to provide good health care to the elderly? 2. Is Medicare encouraging today's workers to save less than they will ultimately need? In other words,... MORE
December 31, 2007
Behavioral Economics and Rationality
Arnold Kling
Cass Sunstein and Ed Glaeser: we suggest that social learning is often best characterized by what we call Credulous Bayesianism. Unlike perfect Bayesians, Credulous Bayesians treat offered opinions as unbiased and independent and fail to adjust for the information sources... MORE
December 25, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From the New York Times. The machines accelerate protons to nearly the speed of light and shoot them into tumors. Scientists say proton beams are more precise than the X-rays now typically used for radiation therapy, meaning fewer side effects... MORE
December 19, 2007
Finance: stocks, options, etc.
Arnold Kling
Nick Schulz sends me three interesting links. 1. A shining example of what I call a bogus mortgage lender. In 2004, Bohan Group, a due diligence underwriting company, was hired by a bank to double-check the suitability of mortgages written... MORE
December 18, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Dolinar, M.D., writes, The physician has taken the history, performed the physical, reviewed the labs, and discussed the illness with the patient and family. He knows the patient's wishes, desires, and values. All this critical information must be considered... MORE
December 14, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
of hearing me talk about health care policy? If so, then don't click on the link to this podcast. I elaborate on ideas I wrote about in Government and Health Care: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.... MORE
December 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Peter Orszag writes, A congressional hearing tomorrow will focus on new long-term budget projections from the Congressional Budget Office. CBO projects that under current law, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid measured as a percentage of gross domestic product will... MORE
November 28, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay: Overall, I am not persuaded that socialized medicine will prove more efficient in the United States. However, I am not a big fan of the insurance industry as it operates today, and I think that it... MORE
November 20, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office: in the absence of changes in federal law: --Total spending on health care would rise from 16 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007 to 25 percent in 2025, 37... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Last year I argued that AIDS estimates were inflated. Now the UN has cut its estimate of the number infected by 40%. This is getting to be a pattern! HT: Tyler (who once said I was dead wrong about this...)... MORE
November 19, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok writes, I consider a 1% chance of death to be very risky, perhaps worthwhile for some morbidly obese people but when 1 in every 100 patients doesn't make it off the table that is not good odds. What... MORE
November 14, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Left's story of health international health care comparisons is the following: 1. The U.S. system is flawed. 2. Other countries' systems work much better. 3. The U.S. system relies on the free market. 4. There are two systems of... MORE
November 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, You don't have to choose between universal access and innovation. It's possible to have both--as long as you do it right. By universal access, he means a government-run system. By innovation, he means wonderful new medical procedures. The... MORE
November 7, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports, An influential medical standards group plans to present a new model today for helping employers and insurers to identify the best primary care doctors and to steer patients their way. Those doctors, in turn, would... MORE
November 6, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw writes, Almost all sweeping health reform proposals involve higher taxes on the rich to provide benefits for those farther down the economic ladder. The redistribution, rather than health reform, is sometimes the main objective. To judge whether my... MORE
November 5, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I talk for an hour with Russ Roberts, here. I'd love to hear your comments. Don't forget to vote for econtalk in the podcast awards. Finally, Greg Mankiw raises some issues with health care statistics. 1. International comparisons of longevity... MORE
October 31, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
As you see in the comments on this post, the Left has an answer to my concern that Medicare is the fiscal equivalent of the Titanic. The answer is, "We need to control health care costs!" Of course! Why didn't... MORE
October 30, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Kevin Drum writes, here's an idea: expand Medicare (or create a similar program) to cover every person in America under the age of 21. And then let them keep it as they grow older. In ten years everyone under 31... MORE
October 24, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
She is a market-hating health care expert. She writes, Just as the U.S. spends more per person on healthcare than any other country in the world on healthcare, healthcare expenditures in Massachusetts surpass spending in every other state. And this,... MORE
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
Terry J. Fitzgerald in the Minneapolis Fed Review: Fringe benefits have become an increasingly important part of employee compensation over the past 30 years. The BLS estimates that benefits currently account for about 30 percent of employer costs for employee... MORE
October 19, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Two strong points that can be scored against conservatism or market-oriented ideas, as opposed to the Bush Administration. First, state-level tax and spending limits haven't worked out. Second, "the right" doesn't (yet?) have a coherent health care... MORE
October 18, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
You might think that the fact that I disagree with Ezra Klein about single-payer health insurance is a "dog bites man" story. But read on. Klein writes, We’ve got all these great universal bills passing at the state level, and... MORE
October 17, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Megan McArdle writes, Take a test for a disease that has a false positive rate of 5%, and a disease prevalence of 1 in 1000--lupus, say. If you test positive in a random assay, what are the odds that you... MORE
October 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He asks some rhetorical questions For all the grandiose promises made in this campaign, has any candidate spoken honestly to the American people about the government's role and failings about individual responsibilities? Has any candidate told the truth about the... MORE
October 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My review of Shannon Brownlee's new book. Brownlee proposes the alternative of paying doctors a salary, based on the number of patients that they see. However, I would argue that this would create the opposite incentive. Under a capitation based... MORE
October 7, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Glen Whitman writes, To enact any mandate, legislators and bureaucrats must specify a minimum benefits package that an insurance policy must cover. Yet this package can't be defined in an apolitical way. Each medical specialty, from oncology to acupuncture, will... MORE
October 5, 2007
Political Economy
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen makes 8 remarks about journalism. The one that most reinforces what I believe is: Journalists tend to favor visible stories and neglect invisible opportunity costs and invisible hand mechanisms, which often but not always puts them against the... MORE
September 19, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I promised I would have more to say about Aubrey de Grey's book, and I do that in this essay. At a more subtle level, de Grey wants institutional changes that wrest control of the research agenda from the medical... MORE
September 18, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Now that Hillary Clinton has released her health care plan, it occurs to me that "health care reform" has become an Orwellian term. Her proposal, like those of other Democrats, would take our existing form of health insurance--what I call... MORE
September 16, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Timothy Taylor's column in the latest Journal of Economic Perspectives points to an interview with Robert Fogel. What we currently call the poverty line is so high that only the top 6 percent or 7 percent of the people who... MORE
September 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
From Robin Hanson:Heroic medicine is just too central to our culture, a culture where economists like me have far less authority than doctors. From Rudi Giuliani: Ultimately, a woman should make that [decision whether to get an abortion] with her... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
To be honest, when Robin Hanson first told me his views on health care, I thought he was a lone nut. A brilliant lone nut, but a lone nut nonetheless. Still, my conversations with Robin inspired me to grill every... MORE
September 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, Cutting half of medical spending would seem to cost little in health, and yet would free up vast resources for other health and utility gains. To their shame, health experts have not said this loudly and clearly enough.... MORE
September 8, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Cheryl Miller writes Prematurity is now the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States, in part due to the “epidemic” of multiple births to IVF patients. Multiples are twenty times more likely to die in the first month... MORE
August 31, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
...according to Northwestern Mutual's statistical applet. But I suspect they don't realize that we should all expect to outlive our so-called "life expectancy." P.S. Notice how the applet does not include income as a predictor of life expectancy - contrary... MORE
August 9, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
But he plays one at his blog. Dr. Bob offers his diagnosis of the health care system, in 8 parts. From Part 7. one of the latest gimmicks the health care policy wonks have dreamed up, more commonly known as... MORE
August 8, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt writes, No one really knows whether preventive medicine will save money in the long run, let alone free up the billions of dollars a year needed to help pay for universal health insurance. In fact, studies have shown... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I received some pushback on my latest health care essay, in which I argued that many of the people who are uninsured have made a choice and should live with the consequences. A reader pointed out that 9 million of... MORE
August 7, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Notwithstanding what I wrote here, I try to make a case the "universal coverage" is no panacea for health care. I write, I would like to see the abolition of the tax break for company-provided health benefits as well as... MORE
August 5, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ken Rogoff raises a very important issue. Many societies view healthcare as a right, not a luxury. When medical expenses constituted only a small percentage of income, as was typically the case 50 years ago, an egalitarian approach to healthcare... MORE
August 1, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma writes, [Columnist Robert J.] Samuelson's continual focus on the budget deficit obscures the real problem. It doesn't matter whether health care is in the public domain or the private domain, the costs will be daunting either way if... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Berenson thinks that he has gotten to the crux of America's health care spending problem. the partisan fight over insurers and drug makers is a distraction from a bigger problem: the relatively high salaries paid to American doctors, and... MORE
July 25, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal reports primary-care doctors, including internists, family physicians, and pediatricians, are in short supply across the country. Their numbers dropped 6% relative to the general population from 2001 to 2005, according to the Center for Studying Health... MORE
July 24, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From an article by Ron Bailey. Olshansky argues that the old paradigm of directly targeting diseases is about to run out of steam. Even if all cancer, all heart disease and all diabetes were eliminated, it would add only 3... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A reader points me to this interview with Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees union. He says that employer-provided health insurance is an anachronism. Coming from a union guy, that's refreshing. It would be even more refreshing coming from... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen asks, in market equilibrium, should we expect two- or three month-long waits to see a doctor? The alternative is for the doctor to charge more for a visit, thereby shortening the queue. My guess is that this has... MORE
July 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
According to the Washington Post, it comes from Jonathan Gruber. Instead, Gruber argued for a more incremental approach, like the one in Massachusetts he helped write. Its central elements would be providing subsidies to people who are unable to pay... MORE
July 8, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Reihan Salam writes, Mind you, we want poor people to be less cost-conscious when it comes to consuming healthcare, so in one obvious sense this is a strength of the French alternative. But then there's everyone else. The post is... MORE
July 2, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes If you set up a market-based health system, allowing insurance companies to pick and choose who and what they will cover, you give them overwhelming incentives to dump, deny, avoid and neglect the sick people. But the data... MORE
June 30, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I have a piece in the Washington Times. I compare Michael Moore's "Sicko" with my wife's "documentary" of our daughter's college graduation last month. On one side of me at the graduation sat the director/co-star, a breast cancer survivor. On... MORE
June 27, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, To this day, I've never read a compelling explanation of why the nation's doctors and hospitals haven't broadly adopted electronic medical records. Has he not read my explanation, or does he not think it compelling? In case... MORE
June 21, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Max Sawicky noticed that I use the phrase "my guess" a lot. A few weeks ago, Julian Sanchez wrote, But it occurs to me that in addition to the phrases at large in the written culture of the society, there... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay says, Illness deprives us of the sense of physical safety. Disease and injury are a throwback to the circumstances in which our physical environment is threatening and overwhelming. Thus, health problems tend to trigger our collectivist instincts.... MORE
June 18, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman gets excited over research by John Komlos and Benjamin E. Lauderdale. They write, Results: US heights have stabilized at mid-century and a perio0d of stagnation set in with the birth cohorts 1955-74, concurrent with continual rapid increases in... MORE
June 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Clive Crook writes, Much more needs to be done to push employers out of the health insurance market. Most of the reforms now being touted, by Democrats and Republicans alike, aim to do the opposite. ...You could give everybody a... MORE
June 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He proposes, 20% Deductible/Out of Pocket Cap: The IRS snarfs 20% of your family economic income. 5% of it is an increase in taxes (but that replaces your and your employer's current health insurance premiums). 15% of it goes straight... MORE
June 6, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
James Pethokoukis thinks that Rudy Guiliani has fallen under my spell. what Giuliani is doing is far more radical than his folksy debate answer suggests. Essentially, he is calling for the complete abolition of the current way healthcare insurance operates... MORE
May 29, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
1. Russ Roberts interviews Robin Hanson, for those of you who are curious to find out more about his thesis that when people do not pay for their own health care, the services that they obtain on average do as... MORE
May 15, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest TCS essay says, Many people began to agitate for universal, government-provided prostitution insurance, arguing that such systems were working in Canada and in many European countries. Such a single-payer system for prostitution would solve the growing problems of... MORE
May 14, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Hansonian doubts aside, I've been thinking about getting LASIK (laser corrective eye surgery) for a couple of years. By making a small investment of discomfort and cash, I could save about 30 hours of time per year (cleaning glasses, doctor... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Baltimore Sun reports National Imaging Associates estimated several years ago that as many as 30 percent of imaging studies were not needed or not the correct test, although NIA believes the number may have declined as insurers have tightened... MORE
May 8, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
What is this Hansonian view of medicine that you hear me talk about? Robin Hanson explains. The bottom line is that thousands of people randomly given free medicine in the late 1970s consumed 30-40% more medical services, paid one more... MORE
April 27, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
A result from Kate Bundorf that (a) I'd like to believe, (b) Seems logical in light of basic micro, but (c) Still strikes me as implausible: Who pays the added costs associated with high rates of obesity? Most health insurance... MORE
April 23, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen writes, Let's say a patient pays $1000 to a doctor, but half of that sum is fraudulent pricing brought on by patient irrationality, non-transparency, fear of death, and fraud. Sound familiar? The real social cost is what the... MORE
April 20, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From the Hartford (Ct.) Courant: Universal Care Might Cost State Almost $18 Billion; Proposal Seen As Dead Later in the story, a spokesman for the state's governor is quoted. "If 6 percent of the people need health insurance, the program... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My Cato friend Michael Cannon writes, I may lose my health policy decoder ring for asking this, but should we really be focusing specifically on covering the uninsured? ...there are other approaches that could purchase more health for the money... MORE
April 19, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
According to the New England Journal of Medicine: the age-adjusted incidence rate of breast cancer in women in the United States fell sharply (by 6.7%) in 2003, as compared with the rate in 2002. Data from 2004 showed a leveling... MORE
April 16, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Nobel Laureate Gary Becker writes, Long-term health insurance with individual plans is uncommon mainly because health insurance companies cannot force customers to make a long-term commitment. If a person has experienced good health, he may seek a cheaper plan with... MORE
April 11, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jason Furman writes, What we need is a different approach to encourage cost consciousness in a progressive manner that links the level of cost sharing to income and attempts to use cost sharing to improve systemwide incentives for more effective... MORE
April 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A commenter on a previous post challenged me to design a single-payer health care system. OK, here goes. We can call this the Arlo health care plan (Arlo is my analogue to Tyrone, Tyler Cowen's evil twin). 1. I am... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Cohn writes, French universal health insurance works an awful lot like Medicare does in this country. And that's the great irony of how screwy the debate over health care has become in this country. Conservatives always talk about expanding... MORE
April 4, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Skinner writes Fronstin (2006) estimates that a 55-year-old couple in 2006, planning to retire at age 65, would need to accumulate more than $400,000 during the next 10 years in order to afford supplemental health costs, beyond what Medicare... MORE
March 26, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Los Angeles Times reports, The study, called the Courage Trial, enrolled 2,287 patients at 15 VA medical centers and another 35 hospitals in the United States and Canada. It was sponsored primarily by the VA and the Canadian Institutes... MORE
March 23, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Senator Tom Coburn offers a market-oriented alternative. Under the Act, Americans would be eligible for a tax rebate to purchase health insurance. The “Medi-Choice” rebate would be made directly to a patient’s health insurer and would be worth $2,000. Families... MORE
March 22, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Here is single-payer health care in a nutshell: 1. People are forced to buy something that they don't seem to want 2. Provided by a monopoly 3. Paid for by higher taxes If you need a more nuanced discussion, follow... MORE
March 15, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Marc Siegel writes, By the time a lung cancer is seen on an X-ray it is almost always too widespread to be operated on. Hence, the only chance for a cure is finding it before it has spread via a... MORE
March 7, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Wall Street Journal technology reporter Lee Gomes describes his treatment for pneumonia. Abbott's Harold C. Flynn says it takes the Cell-Dyn 34 seconds to do an analysis. During that time, it counts an average of 325,000 cells, and then goes... MORE
February 28, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Robin Hanson describes four interesting meta-studies on medical research that ought to make you less confident about the latest study that "proves" the wonders of modern medicine.... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Amy Finkelstein writes, Research I conducted shows that Medicare had a substantial effect on the health-care sector. By 1970, the program caused a 37% increase in hospital spending. This is an enormous number. If I extrapolate from the Medicare experience... MORE
February 27, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Chapin White writes Figure 2 illustrates excess growth in real Medicare spending on physician and clinical services. During the 1970s and 1980s, excess growth was quite high, generally ranging between 4 percent and 8 percent. Beginning around 1990, excess growth... MORE
February 16, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Nobel Laureate Daniel McFadden writes, My overall conclusion is that, so far, the Part D program has succeeded in getting affordable prescription drugs to the senior population. Its privatized structure has not been a significant impediment to delivery of these... MORE
February 14, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The McKinsey Global Institute reports, In a study comparing the United States and the United Kingdom, Aaron showed that the United States has four times the number of CT scanners per person, and performs four times the number of scans... MORE
February 12, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay: Somehow, health insurance has become a social fetish. I could travel to the far reaches of the globe, and almost everywhere I would find merchants where my credit is good and my dollars are welcome. But here... MORE
February 7, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Victor R. Fuchs write, [Most health care reform plans] prop up the sagging employment-based insurance system, with all its inefficiencies and inequities, and preserve the second-class income-tested programs such as Medicaid... The country needs comprehensive reform.... MORE
February 5, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
When was the last time Tyler Cowen and I agreed? Let's just say it's been a while. But he's just hit the adverse selection nail on the head: When I argue that adverse selection is not the key, I hear... MORE
January 30, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Boston Globe reports, More than 200,000 people with health insurance would have to buy additional coverage to meet proposed minimum standards under the state's new health insurance law, according to a count completed by insurers yesterday. Most of the... MORE
January 26, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes, Our irresistible force is our belief that health care should not be rationed by price. Our immovable object is the unwillingness of American taxpayers to be turned into an IV drip bag for the health sector that the... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Cato Unbound discussion of health insurance in which I participated has wound down. Here is a snippet from Jonathan Cohn's last post. Programs exclusively for poor people tend to be poor (because they lack powerful political constituencies)... Now, conservatives... MORE
January 24, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I write, Consider the status quo. An economist on the faculty at Princeton who receives generous health benefits from the University is able to enjoy them tax-free. So can the professor's secretary. But, as with all tax breaks, there is... MORE
January 23, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jonathan Zasloff writes Bush plans to pay for [his proposed health insurance deduction] not by efficiencies, but rather by restricting the benefit packages of the already insured, through the deductibility cap. Paying for something with efficiencies is nothing but a... MORE
January 21, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Greg Mankiw points to a story about a health policy proposal under consideration by President Bush. Bush's health-care proposal would use tax breaks to make it easier for people who do not have employer-provided health insurance to buy coverage on... MORE
January 19, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He accuses Arnold Kling, who thinks the healthcare biz need less insurance and more free market capitalism in order to drive down costs and force people to buy only the care they need. I doubt it. More likely it would... MORE
January 17, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Cato Unbound issue on health care has reached the rebuttal stage. I write, ...So I agree with Holt's diagnosis, that health care providers have too much political power. But his prescription–to put more of the health care system under... MORE
January 15, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jacob S. Hacker writes, If one word captures the essence of Health Care for America, it is "guaranteed." Health Care for America would guarantee coverage; it would guarantee a generous package of benefits; it would guarantee greater choice; and it... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
James Miller notes a New York Times story on corporations setting up in-house health clinics. Miller comments, Much of economic growth comes from specializing. Whatever is requiring firms such as Pepsi to "unspecialize" by providing health care is greatly harming... MORE
January 13, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal reports, As doctors studied the course of treatment of dozens of patients at Virginia Mason's spine clinic, it was clear no standard procedures were being followed. Though Virginia Mason physicians are salaried and have no direct... MORE
January 10, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A CBO report says, A chain pharmacy usually dispenses prescriptions as written by the physician for brand-name drugs under patent protection; so even though a chain pharmacy may buy a large volume of brand-name drugs under patent protection, it generally... MORE
January 8, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I start by suggesting that hardly anyone has health insurance. The health coverage most Americans have is what I call “insulation,” not insurance. Rather than insuring them against risk, most families’ health plans insulate them from paying... MORE
January 4, 2007
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Gina Kolata of the New York Times discusses research showing that staying in school longer tends to extend life. A key paper is by Adriana Lleras-Muney. Her approach to sorting out causality and confounding effects: between 1915 and 1939, at... MORE
December 13, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt reports, People with a drug-coated stent seemed unusually vulnerable to blood clots in later years. The new stents solved one problem, but they may have created another. This supports Robin Hanson's view that beneficial medicine is offset by... MORE
November 24, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Carefully read Ezra Klein's piece on why Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) won't slow the growth of health care spending. Long story short: 5% of the population consumes 50% of the health care. To significantly cut costs, you've got to restrain... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Looking at a graph of the distribution of health care spending, Ezra Klein writes, HSAs and their brethren like to pretend that by forcing caution on when you get a test for strep throat, we can significantly effect health costs.... MORE
November 14, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
'Jane Galt' writes, There are some serious constraints that I think would have to be considered by anyone trying to design a national health care package: 1) It cannot provide less, or less rapid, coverage than the typical American policy... MORE
November 7, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
At an MIT economics alumni event today, I had a brief discussion with Robert Hall on health care spending. He argues that (a) health care spending is going to approach 50 percent of GDP by the end of this century,... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Gail R. Wilensky proposes creating a research center devoted to comparing the effectiveness of medical procedures. The most obvious and direct way to finance at least the public portion of a comparative effectiveness center is through a direct appropriation by... MORE
November 3, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I went to Cato to hear leading health care economist David Cutler and others discuss Pay for Performance (if you go to the link in a couple of days, you should be able to view the event). Beforehand, Robin Hanson... MORE
October 31, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
John Ford writes, It seems that Ipswich Hospital in England wants to capitalize on its underutilized XRT facilities to treat animals -- presumably on a fee-for-service basis. ...I'm thinking that the calculated price per unit treatment will be less for... MORE
October 25, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Gina Kolata does some careful reporting in the New York Times. Researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center report that they can save the lives of millions of people by detecting lung cancer early and treating it immediately, when... MORE
October 19, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
As promised, I offer my rebuttal to Jacob Hacker and others who see Medicare expansion as the way to "fix" the health care system. According to the 2006 report of the Medicare Trustees, the unfunded liability in Medicare over the... MORE
October 18, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
David Leonhardt discusses the common complaint, why is it that the U.S. spends so much on health care and has no greater longevity than other countries? He writes, So something beside administrative costs is at work here, and it involves... MORE
October 17, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
The day after I met Ezra Klein and gave him my 10-minute spiel on systematically biased beliefs about economics, he provides a neat example. (My influence? I can dream, can't I?) Discussing findings from a new Kaiser survey on health... MORE
October 16, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, if consumers, as they've repeatedly proven, don't want insurance, but instead want insulation, why shouldn't we seek to make that work (as it does in a variety of other countries and systems). Consumers do love to be... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He sent this email to me and to others: Imagine someone claimed that casinos produce, not just entertainment, but also money. I would reply that while some people have indeed walked away from casinos with more money than they arrived... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He says, Do health markets suffer from substantial market failure? My assessment of these markets says the answer is yes and, in particular, the most difficult problem to solve, adverse selection, is the most serious problem plaguing these markets. My... MORE
October 5, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen reminds us that the U.S. is the leader. In real terms, spending on American biomedical research has doubled since 1994. By 2003, spending was up to $94.3 billion (there is no comparable number for Europe), with 57 percent... MORE
October 4, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
A lot of social scientists are now interested in the effects of the BMI, or Body Mass Index. In the metric system, your BMI is equal to your weight in kg divided by your height in meters squared. If you... MORE
October 3, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Darshak Sanghavi writes A 31 percent reduction in heart attacks, after all, seems impressive. Yet this pervasive way of describing clinical trials in medical journals—focusing on the "relative risk," in this case of heart attack—powerfully exaggerates the benefits of drugs... MORE
September 27, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From an article in The New York Times. In 1950, the country spent less than $100 a year — or $500 in today’s dollars — on the average person’s medical care, compared with almost $6,000 now, notes David M. Cutler...... MORE
September 25, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Your tax dollars helped to fund something called the Citizens Health Care Working Group, which produced this report. Americans clearly want a system that guarantees health care for everyone. The most important considerations expressed focused on people having access to... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
According to Mark Thoma, Krugman writes, Medicare, which is a universal health insurance program for older Americans, spends less than 2 cents of every dollar on administrative costs, leaving 98 cents to pay for medical care. By contrast, private insurance... MORE
September 21, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Sally Pipes writes, For a fresh analysis of health care, people ought to look to economist Arnold Kling’s new book, Crisis of Abundance. Although it offers no easy villain-versus-hero narrative or solution to the challenges of funding health care, it... MORE
September 18, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Harvard Medical School Professor Jerry Avorn writes, In a program financed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, called the Independent Drug Information Service, we scan the medical literature for the best evidence on how to treat a given medical problem (like... MORE
September 14, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Today I successfully bargained down my dentist. In the end, I got 20% off the price of a service I really didn't want in the first place. (Why was I there in the first place? The service I didn't want... MORE
September 10, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Arnold Relman, who is no friend of market-oriented health care policy, nonetheless gives a kind review to Crisis of Abundance in the New England Journal of Medicine. The review is behind a subscriber wall, but excerpts can be found here... MORE
September 8, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In my opinion, Greg Mankiw did not quite nail the problem with this article by David Wessel, who writes, The theory: Give consumers more information, let them choose the best provider and the resulting competition will help to squeeze out... MORE
September 6, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, David Cutler, Angus Deaton, and Adriana Lleras-Muney write, The argument for the role of public health in reduced mortality is made most prominently by Samuel Preston (1975, 1980, 1996). If... MORE
September 4, 2006
Sebastian Mallaby writes, The same argument holds for tax incentives to buy health insurance. Just over a quarter of this subsidy is swallowed by households in the $100,000-plus bracket; far from promoting the wider dissemination of health insurance, it may... MORE
August 31, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports on a recent paper by Harvard's David Cutler and two co-authors. The study calculated, however, that Americans of all ages spent an average of $19,900 on medical care for each extra year of life expectancy... MORE
August 27, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Maggie Mahar writes, it turns out that taxpayers bankroll 51 percent of the nation's $2 trillion health care bill: this includes paying for private insurance for public employees (accounting for 6 percent of total health care spending), Medicare (17 percent... MORE
August 18, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports, in this small, aging industrial city in northeast Ohio, doctors are much more likely than those anywhere else in the country to steer patients toward angioplasty ...Whether the preference for angioplasty is good for the... MORE
August 17, 2006
Economics of Education
Arnold Kling
My latest essay says, Imagine what might happen if one were to run a controlled experiment, pooling a group of students and randomly assigning them to different schools. Would the "good" suburban school really do better than the "failing" urban... MORE
August 7, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
MIT's Amy Finkelstein argues that (a) much of the increased use of technology in American medicine (what I term "premium medicine" in Crisis of Abundance) has been induced by Medicare, which reduced out-of-pocket costs and thereby increased the demand for... MORE
August 6, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On August 29th at noon, join me at Cato for lunch and a discussion of Crisis of Abundance. Sebastian Mallaby a Washington Post columnist, and Jason Furman, a Democratic wonk, are scheduled to be on the panel.... MORE
July 19, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen recommends a paper by David M. Cutler and Adriana Leras-Mooney on the effect of education on health. The obvious economic explanations – education is related to income or occupational choice – explain only a part of the education... MORE
July 18, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From my talk a couple months ago on the Massachusetts health care plan. As I said afterwards, I was unusually fluid in this presentation. My talk begins on p. 28 of the transcript. An excerpt: If you were to deregulate... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Eric Crampton
A recent paper in Social Science & Medicine makes me wonder whether editorial boards of health journals ever bother including economists as referees. In Shifting dollars, saving lives (working paper version for those without subscriptions), Kiwi public health profs Blakely... MORE
July 15, 2006
Fiscal Policy
Arnold Kling
Laurence J. Kotlikoff writes, the U.S. government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments... MORE
June 27, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Glenn Reynolds asks for my comments on a book by Andy Kessler. I'll pass on that, but speak to the general thesis that medical technology will advance rapidly in the coming years. I am generally optimistic about medical technology, but... MORE
June 23, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I've long thought that life expectancy statistics were odd. Encyclopedias treat nation's life expectancies as numbers on par with square mileage. But in reality, doesn't this require a bunch of assumptions about future health developments? At least according to Wikipedia,... MORE
June 21, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Christian Hagist write, European critics of the U.S. health care system often focus on the private provision of health care and health insurance. Yet the more important difference between the United States and other developed countries... MORE
June 19, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I had never heard of Jason Furman until today, when I encountered him twice. First, he shows up on Greg Mankiw's blog, where Greg touts this paper. In fact, if we turned our irrational health tax subsidies right-side up–by curbing... MORE
June 12, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I spoke here. one of the recommendations in the book -- and this is probably unusual from a libertarian perspective -- is that the government charter some kind of commissions analogous to what the UK has called their "National Institute... MORE
June 2, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In an op-ed picked up by the Providence Journal, I write, I am not among the many who believe that single-payer health care is the best solution. However, I think that an experiment with single-payer coverage [by a single state]... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Cato's Michael Tanner writes, There is no doubt that Americans spend more on health care than any other country. But why is that necessarily a bad thing? There is no “right” amount to spend on health care or anything else.... MORE
June 1, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I call it the health gap. I wanted to believe (A), that American health care actually is more effective than international comparisons of longevity would suggest. ...Many people would like to believe (B), that Americans could receive the same health... MORE
May 31, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My reader-blogger Joe Kristan spots this WSJ story Interest is growing in the digital version of the breast-cancer screening test, driven in part by a study last fall in the New England Journal of Medicine that said digital was better... MORE
May 30, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
The ancient Greeks glorified "a strong mind in a strong body." A neat article by Linda Gottfredson, "Intelligence: Is It the Epidemiologists’ Elusive 'Fundamental Cause' of Social Class Inequalities in Health?" (2004. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 86(1): 174–199)... MORE
May 28, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
According to a study that "account[s] for biases due to unobserved selection and endogeneity," retirement really is bad for your health. Just as I suspected. (Next I'd like to see a study confirming the obvious fact that retirement leads to... MORE
May 21, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
If you want the definitive word on the Massachusetts Health Care reform, be sure to attend this event at the Rayburn Building at noon on Tuesday, May 23.... MORE
May 20, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok writes On its face, price gouging is a peculiar explanation for recent increases in insurance premiums. Is greed new to the world? Were insurance companies followers of Mother Teresa just a few years ago? If greed and gouging... MORE
May 17, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
As long as I'm creating an alert for Bryan's book, I might as well create one for Crisis of Abundance, which is an essential resource for anyone interested in health care policy and, with birthdays and graduations coming up, makes... MORE
May 15, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
At this Cato-sponsored event on Tuesday, May 23rd, at noon on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile, my book could use more reviews at Amazon. If you've actually read it, then weigh in. But don't use your review as a way to voice... MORE
May 12, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Nortin Hadler is not your typical MD, as this interview indicates. I think bypass surgery belongs in the medical archives. There are only two reasons you’d ever want to do it: one, to save lives, the other to improve symptoms.... MORE
May 10, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
is here. I should start by saying that the book does not contain a single major policy recommendation that is politically palatable today. That fact will greatly limit its appeal to most Washington wonks. To gauge their reaction to Crisis... MORE
May 8, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I'm interviewed over at Catallarchy. The main topic is Crisis of Abundance, but the interview ranges over a number of topics. Some of the questions include, Where does your interest in economics come from? What do you like most about... MORE
May 3, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I have posting priveleges at the new Cato blog. Not sure how much I'll use them--it's not easy to do two blogs at once. But I wanted to point to this post, where I let off quite a bit of... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A New York Times story says, Americans 55 and over are much sicker than their British counterparts even though the United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as Britain, researchers said Tuesday. ...The researchers... MORE
May 2, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Republicans John Shadegg and Jim DeMint write, In the past 30 years, state governments have instituted more than 1,500 mandated benefits. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, these mandates have increased the cost of individual health insurance by... MORE
April 27, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Is universal health care coverage possible? Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review says nay. If you can't get an operation because your country's national health insurance system has you on a long waiting list, in what sense have you enjoyed "universal... MORE
April 12, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In response to an op-ed by the Massachusetts governor in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, I write, These are the "near-poor," who are portrayed by the Governor as an oppressed class who badly needs support from the state. "We needed far... MORE
April 10, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Here is a Leftist critique of the new Massachusetts health care plan. the linchpin of the plan is the false assumption that uninsured people will be able to find affordable health plans. A typical group policy in Massachusetts costs about... MORE
April 7, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I've long been skeptical of the statistics for AIDS in Africa. The whole story had a quasi-Soviet flavor to it. The main difference: Soviet growth statistics were too good to be true, while African AIDS statistics were too bad to... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In today's Wall Street Journal, the author of a new book on health care policy writes (subscription required--free version here), The elected leaders of Massachusetts have come up with a novel solution for the vexing problem of paying for health... MORE
April 6, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ezra Klein writes, Once and slowly: Medicare operates within America's private health system context, bargaining with private providers at near-market rates. It's new drug plan is entirely operated through private insurers, and Medicare as a centralized market isn't allowed to... MORE
April 5, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
One of my essays on health care. suppose that the goal of health care reform is to reduce our health care budget to the level that would prevail if our per capita health care spending were the same as in... MORE
April 4, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I don't know exactly what the legislators of Massachusetts voted for, and I suspect that neither do they. Here is the story. The measure does not call for new taxes, but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to... MORE
April 1, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I'm the kind of patient who tries doctors' patience. A memorable check-up from a few years ago (before Robin Hanson convinced me they were a waste of time): Doc: Do you smoke? Me: No. Doc: Do you drink? Me: No.... MORE
March 27, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On Wednesday, March 29th, if you're a Capitol Hill type, you can hear me at a live gig at noon. B-339 Rayburn. Topic is health care policy. And if you thought that George Mason taking on U-Conn was tough, see... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In the last of a good series of posts on health care, she writes, Have the government pay for all health care expenditures above 15% of adjusted gross income, and cover 100% of health care expenditures by people living under... MORE
March 23, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A blogger writes, Yes, yes, hindsight is 20/20. But the fact that the patient started to improve clinically within about 4 days of her inpatient hospital course (and with that, essentially showed us that she had mono, not lymphoma) makes... MORE
March 20, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Will Wilkinson writes, I believe that the state’s grant of monopoly privelege to certain official certifying agencies has a lot do do with the high cost of health care. Besides creating artificial scarcity (and therefore huge rents for M.D.s), the... MORE
Social Security
Arnold Kling
William Saletan writes, The point of Social Security was to subsidize those who couldn't work, not those who could. The program's founding document said it would support old people who were "dependent," "beyond the productive period" and "without means of... MORE
March 14, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I write, They argue that eventually we will need government rationing of health care. But they say that this issue can be deferred, because in the short run the shift to a government-run health care finance system would save enough... MORE
March 12, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Clive Crook writes, Citizens everywhere desire unrestricted access to state-of-the-art technologies. Increasingly, they insist on choice and control, too. Yet they are unwilling to pay what those things cost. People demand as a right the best health care money can... MORE
March 10, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman and Robin Wells write, If US politicians could be persuaded of the advantages of a public health insurance system, the next step would be to convince them of the virtues, in at least some cases, of honest-to-God socialized... MORE
March 1, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In the San Francisco Chronicle, one by your truly. Those of us who propose market-oriented health-care reform need to spell out what this will mean for consumers -- how it will increase their responsibility to study the costs and benefits... MORE
February 13, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The 2006 Economic Report of the President is available, and the first chapter I turned to was the one on health care. The rising costs of health care are reflected in premiums (employer plus employee share) for employer-provided insurance that... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Sebastian Mallaby writes, Even if the administration were determined to shelter out-of-pocket payments using health savings accounts, why make them so generous? It proposes both a tax deduction and a tax credit when money goes into the accounts; savings would... MORE
February 9, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The New York Times reports, The number of cancer deaths in the United States has dropped slightly, the first decline in more than 70 years, the American Cancer Society is reporting today... The decline occurred in 2003, the latest year... MORE
February 8, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Here are a couple of new pieces on health care policy, with my comments.... MORE
February 6, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Posner has some very iconoclastic proposals to reduce excessive spending on health care.... MORE
February 3, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen and Brad DeLong cite a recent Paul Krugman column that praised VHA health care. I think that it's wonderful that the VHA, which used to be administered poorly, has gotten better. But I am not ready to jump... MORE
January 26, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Robert J. Samuelson writes, Americans generally want their health care system to do three things: (1) provide needed care to all people, regardless of income; (2) maintain our freedom to pick doctors and their freedom to recommend the best care... MORE
January 25, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
From my latest essay For me, it is a bit difficult to credit the notion that insurance companies induce people to choose foot amputations over preventive visits to podiatrists. Even if the podiatrist visit is not covered by insurance, it... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
If you thought that Bush economics was an oxymoron before, wait until you read this morning's lead story in the Washington Post. President Bush will propose that Americans be allowed to take tax deductions on more of their out-of pocket... MORE
January 13, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
As the New York Times puts it, The Maryland legislature passed a law Thursday that would require Wal-Mart Stores to increase spending on employee health insurance, a measure that is expected to be a model for other states. Economics says... MORE
January 4, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Robert Kuttner attempts to debate Milton Friedman MF: ...in the case of medicine, I would really like to see, and I wish I were competent myself to do it myself, a comparative study between dentistry and medicine. RK: But dentistry... MORE
January 3, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
One of my favorite web sites, Edge.org, recently posed a question to famous thinkers: What is Your Most Dangerous Idea?. There are many interesting ideas on a variety of topics. Paul Ewald said that it may be possible to find... MORE
January 1, 2006
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Gary M C Shiu asks The real puzzle is: If national health care is indeed that "inefficient" as Arnold claimed. Why is it so prevalent across the world, and why it is so difficult to get rid of? I don't... MORE
December 26, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma reports that Paul Krugman writes, the rise of medical technology ... makes ... medicine ... in which doctors call for every procedure that might be of medical benefit, increasingly expensive. This is the position that I arrived at... MORE
December 15, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I write, What we are left with, then, is that people do not want real health insurance. I would gladly take a health insurance policy with a $10,000 deductible per individual, and I suspect that many of my wise, risk-averse... MORE
November 29, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
We're gaining a point of subjective health every 333 years. But on second thought, that's not so bad. Another way to express the same fact is to say that we are aging by only 9.5 months every year.... MORE
November 28, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Lately economists have gotten awfully interested in subjective well-being, popularly known as "happiness." (Here's my take; here's Arnold's; and don't neglect Will Wilkinson's blog on the subject). And of course economists have long been interested in health - trying to... MORE
November 26, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay is now out from behind the subscription wall in the Weekly Standard. Massachusetts is considering health insurance reform to address the problems of the uninsured. The federal government is pressuring the state to do something or lose... MORE
November 22, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The lead story in today's Wall Street Journal reports If a treatment helps people, should governments and private insurers pay for it without question? Or should they first measure the benefit against the cost, and only pay if the cost-benefit... MORE
November 18, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Donald Moran writes, As private insurance thins out toward a more catastrophic form, however, this dynamic can be expected to change, in two ways. First, facing a much larger share of the first-dollar cost of expensive therapies, patients will be... MORE
November 16, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
He writes If Medicare and Medicaid spending continue to grow 3.1% faster than GDP, by 2150 the federal government would consume 370% of GDP. Hold on a sec. (See also, Robert J. Samuelson on AARP's America Is a Mirage)... MORE
November 14, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Mark Thoma channels Paul Krugman. It's nice to have Paul Krugman discuss a question that has been addressed repeatedly at this site, market failure in the provision of health and social insurance due to moral hazard and adverse selection This... MORE
November 13, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Boston Globe reports, Rhetoric surrounding the healthcare debate in Massachusetts has been largely shaped by plans to extend coverage to the poor. But two of the major initiatives under consideration by the Legislature would also, for the first time,... MORE
November 1, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Kevin Drum writes The bottom line is that if HSAs are a better deal for healthy people, then inevitably they're a worse deal for sick people. And if you take healthcare seriously, it's sick people you should be concerned about.... MORE
October 27, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I recapitulate some basic economics in my latest essay. American firms will not become more competitive by shedding health care costs, unless in the process they can reduce the net compensation paid to workers. Cutting health insurance benefits and raising... MORE
October 17, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
This documentary attempts to make vivid the weakness of the Canadian health care system. It begins by showing how attached Canadians are to the principle of government-provided health care, but then exposes the consequences in terms of waiting times, suffering,... MORE
October 16, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Morris M. Kleiner writes, Even in the 1950s, licensing covered less than 5% of the American workforce. Now more than 20% of the U.S. workforce is covered by state licensing laws...prices in regulated occupations have increased more--and the earnings of... MORE
October 9, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
The Sensible Knave's newborn daughter was born a couple months early. But not only is she doing well, she's giving her dad some thought-provoking ideas about international health comparisons. The highlight: In a tragic sort of way, inferior prenatal care... MORE
September 14, 2005
Politics and Economics
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen suggests four problems for policy research to solve. In several cases, his constraints on the solution are significant. For example, he wants to see A good health care plan that is practical, not too far from politically feasible,... MORE
August 31, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Another installment in my continuing attempt to fight Gladwellian nonsense and to defend the use of economics in health care policy: Most people do not like to go to the doctor, undergo medical procedures, or stay in the hospital. Medical... MORE
August 26, 2005
Social Security
Arnold Kling
Niall Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, writing in The New Republic (subscription required), propose to tackle the fiscal mess three ways. First, they suggest replacing existing Federal taxes (personal income, corporate income, payroll, and estate) with a consumption tax that... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I think so. Gladwell tries to simultaneously argue two points, which are mutually contradictory. 1) People have to obtain health care, so that raising the cost to them will not reduce their demand. Therefore, insulating them from the cost of... MORE
August 22, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Malcolm Gladwell writes, People without health insurance have bad teeth because, if you’re paying for everything out of your own pocket, going to the dentist for a checkup seems like a luxury. It isn’t, of course. He argues that because... MORE
August 10, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
The symptoms: Rapidly rising medical costs and lots of wasteful treatment. The treatment: Crack down health savings accounts! That's the quality of reasoning you get from California's Insurance Commissioner Garamendi. This critique from Richard Ralston of Americans for Free Choice... MORE
July 25, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Some doctors keep abreast of the latest medical research. Others keep practicing the medicine they learned thirty years ago. We should all prefer the first kind, right? An interesting post by Russ Roberts on the accuracy of medical research has... MORE
July 24, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Stephen Cha attacks the pharmaceutical industry's practice of showering gifts on physicians. Food, trinkets, pens and coffee mugs were being handed out to the whole office staff, about 20 people including med students and doctors -- all courtesy of Merck... MORE
July 19, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Alex Tabarrok wants the freedom to buy drugs without having to beg a doctor's permission, and I couldn't agree more. When I mentally review my last five doctor's visits, virtually the sole benefit I got was access to a drug... MORE
July 14, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal reports on a new form of health insurance. The illnesses covered under the policies vary. Policies typically insure for certain forms of cancer, heart disease and stroke, but some cover a far longer list of ailments,... MORE
July 13, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
This news story reports, Hospitals in Pennsylvania are underreporting a serious infection problem that, by their estimates, last year sickened 11,668, killed 1,793 and added $2 billion to the bill. ... Charles Inlander, a local consumer advocate and member of... MORE
July 4, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Following up on Bryan's post, a couple of points. He quotes Robin Hanson to the effect that a RAND study found that people who reduced health care spending by 25 or 30 percent showed little benefits, although "Blood pressure may... MORE
July 1, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
I've been meaning to reply to Trent McBride and Tyler Cowen (see here and here) on my doubts about the effects of medicine on health. McBride poses three challenges: Challenge #1: Don’t you have to recognize the non-mortality benefits of... MORE
June 27, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Last week I went to the doctor for an ear infection. Did I die from the hypocrisy? No, I knew from childhood experience that ear infections are one of the few things doctors can easily cure. Of course, my first... MORE
June 22, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Nick Weininger wonders In debates about health care it is often assumed by all sides that the US has the least socialist, most free-market health care system of any modern developed country... But is that premise true? ...It seems clear... MORE
June 21, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
A doctor weighs in at Catallarchy on my debate with Arnold. He's got some good questions for us at the end, which I hope to answer during the course of the week.... MORE
June 17, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Arnold makes me want to be a little more careful about my position on health care. By way of background, I'll admit that I get most of this from Robin Hanson. But I was so incredulous when I first started... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Co-blogger Bryan and I have been arguing over two issues, one substantive and one methodological Substantive issue: I say that health care probably is effective. He says that there is no evidence that it is effective on average. Incidentally, Paul... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I argue that improving cost-effectiveness of health care may require higher administrative expenses. How can suppliers be incented to balance costs and benefits in choosing treatment plans? One solution is to study the results of different treatment... MORE
June 16, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Two weeks ago I pointed readers toward evidence that the value of health care is small. Now Arnold cites Murphy and Topel claiming that the present value of a cure for cancer is $50 trillion. What gives? Here's what my... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Paul Krugman writes, I like Ted Kennedy's slogan "Medicare for all." It reminds voters that America already has a highly successful, popular single-payer program, albeit only for the elderly. So that is Paul Krugman's health care plan. Medicare for all.... MORE
June 15, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Kevin Murphy and Robert Topel write, From 1970 to 2000 gains in life expectancy added about $3.2 trillion per year to national wealth, with half of these gains due to progress against heart disease alone. Looking ahead, we estimate that... MORE
June 8, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Steven Pearlstein writes, For most Americans, providing health care ought to be different from selling soap; they won't tolerate doctors acting like commissioned salesmen and investment bankers. And if that means having less market competition and more regulation in the... MORE
June 4, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Arnold Kling remarks: All I can think of is the public digesting Paul Krugman's argument that we spend more money on health care than countries with socialized medicine, we have the same longevity as those countries, therefore socialized medicine is... MORE
June 2, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I write the effectiveness of activist medicine can only be judged in a statistical sense. To know whether the procedures were appropriate, you have to know the distribution of outcomes that occurred when those procedures were used... MORE
May 31, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
My colleague Robin Hanson introduced me to contrarian research on both health and the family. The orthodox views, of course, are that medicine is the primary cause for rising life expectancy, and good parenting is the primary cause of happy,... MORE
May 23, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I write If you obtain a colonoscopy every five years, starting at age 50, then between age 50 and age 75 you will have 6 colonoscopies. Dr. Arai, quoted above, gives a range of $500 to $1000... MORE
May 19, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Can politicians improve the efficiency of health care by pushing computerized medical records? I raise questions. The bank owns the data in my checking account because my bank is involved in every transaction that changes my balance. There is no... MORE
May 18, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In a review of Robert Fogel's Escape from Hunger, Angus Deaton writes, Today, movements in life expectancy in rich countries are driven by trends in chronic disease among those over 50—infant and maternal mortality rates are no longer important—so that,... MORE
May 12, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
About the case I discussed earlier where a young woman received extensive services for eye inflammation, Ben England writes, Activist care in an academic setting is a little different than activist care in general. To be trained as a physician... MORE
May 11, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
After looking at health care data for a long time, my point of view on our system is expressed in this essay. I define activist medicine as procedures, treatments, and consultations that have a low probability of affecting the outcome.... MORE
May 9, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Posner writes, The second motive for privacy, however—the desire to conceal discreditable facts—is more questionable from a social standpoint. In order to make advantageous transactions, both personal (such as dating or marriage or being named in a relative’s will)... MORE
May 5, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I look at some data. The United States spends more on the average poor person than [other advanced] countries spend on the average person. In fact, the MEPS data understate spending in the United States, in part,... MORE
May 4, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Bryan Caplan
Economists have been joining the bandwagon against obesity. Part of me suspects that this is one of those problems that feels worse if people talk about it. The more people lament obesity, the more unaesthetically obese people I notice. Every... MORE
May 3, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Friedman writes, The truth is that random events can make or break us. It is more comforting to believe in the power of hard work and merit than to think that probability reigns not only in the casino but... MORE
April 20, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I do the arithmetic. Suppose that a medical test costs $1000, and 98 percent of the time it fails to turn up anything that would affect treatment. The other 2 percent of the time, it results in a treatment choice... MORE
April 15, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I write, One way to sort this out would be to conduct a statistically valid comparison of fetal survival rates across countries. In each country to be studied, take a random sample of pregnancies that are... MORE
April 12, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I write, Ask an economist what is the best type of health insurance, and he or she is likely to respond "catastrophic coverage." ...In practice, we observe very little catastrophic coverage. Instead, the most widespread form... MORE
April 11, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Terry Lierman, the Chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party, forwarded me a link to an article in the Los Angeles Times about declining real wages. With benefits factored in, workers' total compensation did outpace inflation in 2004, even if they... MORE
April 7, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I suggest how health insurance administrative costs could be reduced. A management consultant would recommend eliminating unnecessary interfaces. For example, you could eliminate state regulators and employers from the insurance process. Having 51 different sets of state... MORE
March 23, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Interesting comments from Roy Poses at Health Care Renewal. He, er, poses an interesting question. Outside of medicine, the price of technologies drop as they age. Admittedly, there have been many incremental improvements in CT scans, but there have been... MORE
March 21, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
How much of our health care spending is wasted? In this essay, I argue that the waste is less than many people believe. I do not believe that health-care reformers should be taken seriously when they suggest that spending on... MORE
March 15, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
There are studies that reportedly show that a large share of health care spending comes in the last year of life. For example, this abstract gives a figure of 22 percent of total health care spending. (UPDATE: looking at the... MORE
March 14, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Doctors' prescriptions for health care tend to conflict with economists'. In this essay, I take on the proposals made in The New Republic by Dr. Arnold S. Relman. In a free market, consumer sovereignty and competition tend to create instability... MORE
March 13, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
A nice profile in the New York Times. To make coverage universal, Cutler advocates a $6,000 credit for poor families (and less, on a sliding scale, for others, tapering off to a small credit for people earning $50,000 and up).... MORE
February 25, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Henry E. Jones, MD, writes, in the late 1990s HMOs throughout the State panicked at the prospect of losing their patients to Internet physicians. Pharmacists panicked at the prospect of Internet pharmacies taking their business. So the Medical Board of... MORE
February 24, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The self-employed are less likely to have health insurance than ordinary wage-earners. This may not be the bad thing that most Washington wonks assume it to be, according to a paper by Craig William Perry and Harvey Rosen. Perry and... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal describes what people will do in order to have Medicaid pay for nursing home care. Anyone can give away most of his assets and three years later become eligible for Medicaid with no questions asked. Or,... MORE
February 23, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Holman W. Jenkins writes, a University of Maryland study found that the more generous a patient's insurance, the more likely he was to be taking a Cox-2 -- and the less likely he was to need it. For the patients... MORE
February 14, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Extending the remarks I made earlier, in my latest essay I look at a recent study of medical-related bankruptcies and conclude that cost-reimbursement health insurance is ineffective and should be replaced by event-based insurance. Event-based insurance means receiving a lump-sum... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Posner writes, As a matter of economic principle (and I think social justice as well), Medicare should be abolished. Then the principal government medical-payment program would be Medicaid, a means-based system of social insurance that is part of the... MORE
February 9, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The latest Wall Street Journal blogger celebrity death-match features Russ Roberts and John Irons on health care. Here's Russ: Because of various government subsidies, out-of-pocket spending is a little more than 10% of total health spending (thanks to Alex Tabarrok... MORE
January 24, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On the previous post, Spencer left a comment recommending an article by Phillip Longman on Veterans Administration hospitals, which it turns out over the past decade have improved quality in many areas relative to other medical care systems. suppose an... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Andy Laperriere makes the case for Health Savings Accounts combined with high-deductible health insurance policies. more than 10% of the cost of a visit to the doctor -- $40 billion per year -- is wasted on paperwork. Most of these... MORE
January 18, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Richard Posner cautions against overstating the benefits of tort reform in health care. It is always important to distinguish between financial and real costs. Insofar as malpractice liability merely transfers wealth from physicians to (some) patients, aggregate costs are unaffected.... MORE
Social Security
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I discuss the esoteric but important topic of longevity calculations. How do we calculate the longevity of a person born in, say, 1950? The analogy would be to look at how many people born that year died... MORE
January 1, 2005
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Atul Gawande writes, It used to be assumed that differences among hospitals or doctors in a particular specialty were generally insignificant. If you plotted a graph showing the results of all the centers treating cystic fibrosis--or any other disease, for... MORE
December 28, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Jeffrey R. Brown and Amy Finkelstein write, At $135 billion annually, long-term care expenditures represent over 8.5 percent of total health expenditures for all ages, or roughly 1.2 percent of GDP... Private insurance reimburses only 4 percent of long-term care... MORE
December 27, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On the blogroll to the left, you will find "Jay Solo: Carnival of the Capitalists," which is a collection of posts that comes out every Monday. This week's edition is unusually good. Don't miss it. One of the links I... MORE
December 25, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I was not aware of some of these statistics. Medicaid, the nation's largest health insurance program, is costing the states and the federal government more than $300 billion a year. The growth of the program, which covers the poor and... MORE
December 24, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Paul H. O'Neill writes Today, in many corners of even our most significant federal payment systems, we still pay clinicians and facilities for activity, not for the quality of the job they did for the patient. ...The federal government should... MORE
December 10, 2004
Edward Lotterman writes, When or why should government use direct payments versus tax breaks? The answers are more political than economic. One skeptic has argued, "Politicians and economists have a love-hate relationship with tax breaks. Politicians love them and economists... MORE
December 8, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Radley Balko and Michael Cannon propose changes in health insurance regulation. Currently, many states require health insurers to charge the same premiums for any member of a group health plan, regardless of risk. This means that the costs of the... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel P. Kessler argue that by broadening the health care tax subsidy to include personal spending (not just corporate spending), costs would go down. According to our calculations, based on research from the... MORE
November 28, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' William J. Wiatrowski reports on a decline in workers receiving employer-provided medical benefits over the past decade. Some of this reflects employee choice. In 1992-93, roughly 3 out of 4 private industry workers were offered... MORE
November 27, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Dr. James J. Mongan writes, After 30 years of waging the battle for broader health insurance, I am convinced the debate over universal coverage is more about values than it is about specific plans. If the resources were made available,... MORE
November 15, 2004
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
David Masten has a brilliant way of explaining the impact of regulation on the pharmaceutical industry. He imagines a world in which computers are regulated like pharmaceuticals. - the Electronics and Computers Administration would have just approved the Intel i486... MORE
October 29, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Christopher J. Conover has attempted to estimate the total cost imposed by legal and regulatory distortions of health care, by synthesizing previous studies of individual issues. The analysis suggests that the total cost of health services regulation exceeds $339.2 billion.... MORE
October 26, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Ron Bailey writes, we have a system skewed toward overuse by the haves and underuse by the have-nots, in which the healthiest people (highly paid employees) get the most generous health insurance. The Kaiser Commission reported that per capita spending... MORE
October 19, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Can we lower drug costs by importing from Canada? Perhaps not, according to this story. Canadians must stop Americans from using Internet pharmacies to raid its medicine chest or face a drug shortage, a coalition of Canadian groups representing seniors,... MORE
October 14, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Could we have free-market health care? I suggest that it requires two reforms. On the demand side, I propose event reimbursement in health insurance instead of procedure reimbursement. On the supply side, I propose reputation systems instead of credential-based regulation.... MORE
September 30, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I attended this Cato forum on health care reform options. Speakers were Sally Pipes, John Goodman, Jeff Lemieux, and Robert Kuttner. A few notes: Best one-liner belonged to Kuttner: "The hardest job for a liberal is to defend the D.C.... MORE
September 28, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In this essay, I contend that what most people think of as health insurance is not technically insurance, but something else. An equivalent plan for restaurant meals would be that instead of paying for your meal, you would pay an... MORE
September 13, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay on health care policy: I think it is useful to divide the health care issue into three areas: general wellness; acute care; and discretionary procedures. The problems and solutions differ by area. What I mean by general... MORE
September 9, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Are health care suppliers to blame for high health care costs in the United States? Uwe Reinhardt and others say yes. I am not convinced. The basis of this claim is somewhat weak, however. In health care, it is difficult... MORE
September 5, 2004
Cross-country Comparisons
Arnold Kling
The Wall Street Journal asks a series of questions to a number of Nobel Laureates in economics. On one question, whether the global income distribution will be more equal 50 years from now, several of them say "yes," because they... MORE
September 3, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In my latest essay, I look at the specifics of the President Bush's economic proposals. Overall, I am afraid that the President's concept of the "ownership society" owes more to David Brooks than it does to Stephen Bainbridge. But the... MORE
August 31, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
How can you tell whether one country's health care system works better than another? In this essay (read the whole thing), I talk about how not to make the comparison. Overall, I think that it is a mistake to define... MORE
August 30, 2004
Cross-country Comparisons
Arnold Kling
Gerard F. Anderson, Uwe E. Reinhardt, Peter S. Hussey, and Varduhi Petrosyan write, the United States spends more on health care than any of the other OECD countries spend, without providing more services than the other countries do. This... MORE
August 24, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In an essay arguing against relying on linking health insurance with employment, I write If employers bear the cost of health insurance, then I'm the Easter Bunny. It is fairy-tale economics to believe that "nice" employers give away health insurance,... MORE
August 17, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In a rather disappointing conclusion to its series of editorials on economic policy, the Washington Post writes If all regions could emulate the most efficient fifth of the country, the cost of Medicare would fall by 30 percent. Enforcing efficiency... MORE
August 9, 2004
Cost-benefit Analysis
Michael Munger
by Michael Munger Guest Blogger An amazing study was released August 2 by the UCal-Berkeley Labor Center. The conclusion? Wal-mart costs California $86 million a year. The nefarious company does this by cruelly (wait for it) employing 44,000 Californians as... MORE
August 3, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Physician licensing is one of those issues where economics and ordinary intuition conflict. Most people believe that licensing serves to protect consumers from incompetent doctors. Economists worry that licensing is a form of supply restriction and rent-seeking. EconJournalWatch, a publication... MORE
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I argue that on domestic policy, President Bush should focus on Social Security and health care. Our existing system was designed when reaching the age of 65 meant that your active life was probably over, and you were likely to... MORE
July 26, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
John Lanius points out that in April of 1961, then-private-citizen Ronald Reagan warned, The legislative chips are down. In the next few months Americans will decide whether or not this nation wants socialized medicine . . . first for its... MORE
July 20, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
My latest essay is on health care policy. America's health care system has many flaws. However, the solution is not to enlarge government's role. What I would like to see is a role for government in health care that is... MORE
July 6, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Reading Robert Fogel's latest book, I noticed that he provided some simple but paternalistic proposals for health care. Robert Fogel says that we should stop thinking of the problem of poverty and health care as one of insurance and instead... MORE
June 15, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Today's Washington Post contains another op-ed piece by a physician, and of course he is in favor of price controls on prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry will intone its familiar mantra: The cost of drugs is a relatively small percentage... MORE
June 14, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Laurence Kotlikoff suggests this. All Medicare participants would receive individual-specific vouchers on October 1st of each year to purchase insurance coverage for the following calendar year. The size of the voucher would be based on the participant's current medical condition... MORE
June 7, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
In an interview, Milton Friedman explains why shifting education and health care from the market to the government is inefficient. There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you... MORE
June 1, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Brad DeLong writes, now the Kerry campaign has dusted off and brought forward a very clever idea from Brandeis's Stuart Altman...Have the government take its task of social insurance seriously, and reinsure private insurers and HMOs: construct a 'premium rebate'... MORE
May 11, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen raises a good question. Have you ever heard the claim that U.S. medical care is in trouble because we subsidize third-party insurance through the tax system? ...If the argument is that tax deductibility leads to too much health... MORE
May 7, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Nick Schultz cites work by Amir Attaran showing that drug company patents are not an obstacle to health care in poor countries--in fact, drug companies do not even bother to obtain patents in the poorest countries. Attaran's research concludes that... MORE
April 22, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Tyler Cowen has an interesting post on the comparison of the productivity of medical care in the U.S. vs. other countries. One brief excerpt: Americans pay more but get better health care in return. We die sooner because we eat... MORE
March 25, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Last night, I went to hear a talk by Regina E. Herzlinger, author of Consumer-driven Health Care. Her philosophy of health care is the opposite of the conventional wisdom that I derided in America is Crazy. The talk was given... MORE
March 19, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Do high health care costs in the United States prove that free-market health care does not work? Steve Verdon responds. The Medicare program subsidizes health care consumption for some of the largest consumers of health care dollars. When you subsidize... MORE
February 20, 2004
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok points out how government ends up paying too much for pharmaceuticals. in some areas, Medicaid accounts for a large fraction of the market...In this situation it makes sense for pharmaceutical companies to raise prices - they lose customers... MORE
February 4, 2004
Social Security
Arnold Kling
I have a new essay that argues that we over-estimate the value of collective benefits. Contrary to my training as an economist, I believe that at least some of the preference that workers have for in-kind benefits reflects flat-out irrationality.... MORE
February 2, 2004
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Milton Friedman argues that the drug-approval process is the problem. On the drug side, what seems to me to be the most serious situation is the extent to which the Food and Drug Administration makes it extremely expensive to produce... MORE
December 17, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The Joint Economic Committee's health economist Tom Miller published a reminder of how our health insurance was system has been (mis-)shaped by tax considerations. Proponents of the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance contend that it provides the financial incentives... MORE
November 21, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
I have not been following the prescription drug benefit bill closely enough to be able to provide a sound economic analysis. According to the Washington Post, I am not alone. This is an extremely expensive, 1,100-page bill that will have... MORE
October 23, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Alex Tabarrok finds evidence that supports more spending on health care. It has been estimated, for example, that increases in life expectancy from reductions in mortality due to cardiovascular disease over 1970-1990 has been worth over $30 trillion dollars -... MORE
October 22, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Business Week's Howard Gleckman successfully distinguishes between health care cost and health care spending. Medical technology is no different than consumer electronics. When DVD players cost $500, few people bought them, so total spending on the devices was insignificant. Now... MORE
October 13, 2003
Social Security
Arnold Kling
Steve Verdon points to a speech by Laurence Kotlikoff with a plan for saving Social Security and Medicare. The Personal Security System 1. The accrual of additional Social Security retirement (OAI) benefits is eliminated. 2. Current retirees and current workers... MORE
October 7, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Recent stories on an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance prompted a couple of essays on health insurance reform. Ronald Bailey writes, One way to increase the number of insured Americans is to break the link between... MORE
October 1, 2003
Regulation and Subsidies
Arnold Kling
Posting here will be infrequent until later in October. Meanwhile, here are some links that may be of interest. Is the insecurity of Microsoft software an externality that should be regulated or taxed? An example of professional licensing as rent-seeking... MORE
September 29, 2003
Income Distribution
Arnold Kling
In an essay called Bleeding-Heart Libertarianism, I sketch a system for using a consumption tax with a negative-income-tax feature to replace government-provided health care, education, and income security. Does the bleeding-heart libertarian approach seem harsh? Actually, the Welfare State is... MORE
August 28, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Pierre Lemieux discusses the distortions in measured costs under a socialized system. Criticizing an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that reports on lower administrative costs in Canada than in the United States, he writes, Canada's long waiting... MORE
August 20, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
This week I got some well-deserved pushback on a couple of posts. Peter Gallagher was not impressed with the story of robots and comparative advantage. (Update: Gallagher posted a new comment with a more favorable interpretation of the robot example.)... MORE
August 18, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Does America spend too much on health care? Has health care been immune to productivity increases and contracted Baumol's cost disease? David Warsh has some answers. "cost disease" is mostly bunk — because it relies on measures of input prices... MORE
August 6, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
The pundits seem to be more radical than the politicians these days. The Washington Post's Steven Pearlstein writes, First, in a rich country with an employer-based system, firms should have to provide a basic health insurance plan to all employees... MORE
July 6, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Some recent articles on the economics of health care: Helen Levy and Thomas Deleire compare the expenditure patterns of people who have health insurance to those of people without health insurance. I think that this is a useful reminder that... MORE
June 25, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
On my criticism of a physician's proposal to cut prices for prescription drugs, Bruce Bartlett wrote, It would cut medical costs even more if we forced all doctors to work for the minimum wage. I used a similar analogy in... MORE
June 22, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
If I were to attempt to practice medicine without a license, I could be prosecuted. On the other hand, there is nothing stopping a doctor from pronouncing himself an economic expert and recommending price controls. In today's Washington Post, physician... MORE
June 16, 2003
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
Arnold Kling
Derek Lowe compares the fact that prescription drugs cost less outside the U.S. to the phenomenon of price discrimination by airlines. Most consumers [of pharmaceuticals] in the US don't realize that they're subsidizing the lower prices for everyone else, whereas... MORE
June 6, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Why is health care regarded as something that the market cannot provide? In this essay, I argue that the problem is mental illness. Anyone who believes that we can afford collectively what we cannot afford individually is delusional... Suppose that... MORE
May 15, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Obesity is getting increased attention from health policy experts and economists. Roger Bate writes, My analysis is preliminary and in any case proves nothing, but it is indicative that fast food has little to do with overall obesity rates. If... MORE
May 9, 2003
Economics of Health Care
Arnold Kling
Thomas Sowell has an essay in three parts on the issue of universal health care coverage. In part one, he challenges politicians who continue to treat profits as evil, in spite of the superior performance of capitalism relative to socialism... MORE
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