The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Health Care, Inequality on May 10th, 2012
This new report is sure to result in a ramping up of coordinated efforts to reduce the obesity “epidemic.” (By the way, I always thought an epidemic was something that was contagious. Does my wife sitting on the couch this evening make me fat?). Too much in it to go point by point, so let’s [...]
Posted in Health Care, Market Failures, Price System, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 24th, 2012
The query in the title suggests an epic post, but we’ll keep it simple today. Let me ask folks what they think of a policy proposal that does the following: Examines the entrepreneurial ability, dynamism, job creating tendencies, etc. of companies and puts companies into two groups: dynamic/productive and stagnant/destructive. Takes the dynamic companies and [...]
Posted in Health Care, Methodology on Apr 23rd, 2012
In labor economics we measure something called the poverty gap. Why do we do this? Because looking at the poverty rate as a measure of poverty tells an incomplete picture of the question we are worried about. For example if I show you two countries, call them Cowistan and Bullistan and in each of then [...]
Posted in Education, Health Care, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 20th, 2012
I have in mind some good that you cannot take with you when you transfer from place to place. This is true whether you move from place to place for selfish reasons, noble reasons, family reasons, or any reason whatsoever. I am not talking about health insurance of course, but your college education. When you [...]
Posted in Health Care, History on Apr 16th, 2012
Folks love to ask me if I think anything the government does now, or has ever done, is good. That’s a silly question for a lot of reasons. Without explaining why I think the question is silly, let me share with you my quick answer: Yes! Public Health Investments. Now, when I say this, I [...]
Posted in Health Care on Mar 29th, 2012
That’s what the health debate is devolving into now. I really do. Now there are discussions if the SCOTUS strikes down the law that it will be a slow, gut-wrenching creep over the next decade to a single-payer-like government system where almost everyone is on an expanded Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP program. That’s because no [...]
Posted in Health Care, Price System, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Mar 5th, 2012
When you hear that the “US” spends approximately 18% of her GDP on health care, and that this figure has doubled in the past 30 years, and that the US experience is special insofar as expenditure increases here are larger than just about anywhere on earth, particularly when you learn that US health outcomes are [...]
Posted in Health Care, Politics on Feb 7th, 2012
When I was a kid I vaguely remember hearing Republican support for a “starve the beast” strategy to shrink government so much that it can be drowned in a bathtub. Someone forgot to tell the Republicans that monsters lurked in the drain. Think about Medicare. Its costs were growing faster, much faster, than projected until [...]
Posted in Education, Health Care on Jan 30th, 2012
John Goodman, summarizing the failure of the Medicare pilot programs to produce cost reductions, asks rhetorically: Can you think of any other market where the buyers of a product are trying to tell the sellers how to efficiently produce it? Great quote. I’d say that higher education gets close particularly if we take a generous [...]
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Health Care on Jan 13th, 2012
I went to the doctor for the first time in three years the other day. Unless I sustain a gun shot wound I do not plan on going again any time soon or they’ll have to commit me to the nuthouse. Why was I there? I threw out my back (what a wuss I am!) [...]
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