Healthcare 2008
Greg Mankiw highlighted all the whiz-bang economic minds that are advising presidential hopeful Barack Obama. Obama's recently unveiled healthcare proposal indicates that either the candidate isn't listening to his advisors or they are not as impressive a bunch of economists as Mankiw seems to think. Beating down pharmaceutical companies for discounts, importing Canadian price controls, and taxing high-earners to subsidize universal coverage, gee, how...sensible and innovative.
Still, despite it having no chance to improve healthcare outcomes, it will sell. Remember that the essence of pure democracy is that 51% of the voters can pee in the cornflakes of the other 49%. But it won't be that tight. In modern day America, something like 80% of the voters would gladly vote to have the other 20% fork over cash to lower their healthcare bills. Unfortunately for healthcare outcomes, the transfer has to be laundered through multiple levels of government bureaucracy, so the cornflake despoilers might get 80 cents on their class warfare dollar. Then they still have to go out and buy insurance that is artificially inflated due to silly concepts like guaranteed issue and numerous onerous mandates, and they still have to try to buy drugs from Canada that are either not available or of suspect provenance.
The central problem is that the policy reform that would do the most good for healthcare outcomes and the economy is not the policy that is the most salable to the public. It will take no small genius to craft a free market-based policy that will do some good but that also will resonate with the voting public. Sadly it seems that the future of healthcare in this country is in the hands of political strategists and PR chieftains that craft the message that the voters will hear regarding healthcare. Sad.
Still, despite it having no chance to improve healthcare outcomes, it will sell. Remember that the essence of pure democracy is that 51% of the voters can pee in the cornflakes of the other 49%. But it won't be that tight. In modern day America, something like 80% of the voters would gladly vote to have the other 20% fork over cash to lower their healthcare bills. Unfortunately for healthcare outcomes, the transfer has to be laundered through multiple levels of government bureaucracy, so the cornflake despoilers might get 80 cents on their class warfare dollar. Then they still have to go out and buy insurance that is artificially inflated due to silly concepts like guaranteed issue and numerous onerous mandates, and they still have to try to buy drugs from Canada that are either not available or of suspect provenance.
The central problem is that the policy reform that would do the most good for healthcare outcomes and the economy is not the policy that is the most salable to the public. It will take no small genius to craft a free market-based policy that will do some good but that also will resonate with the voting public. Sadly it seems that the future of healthcare in this country is in the hands of political strategists and PR chieftains that craft the message that the voters will hear regarding healthcare. Sad.
posted by Donny Baseball at 2:11 PM
2 Comments:
another way to look at the issue is this: the electorate does not want to take a chance on something that's already the best in the world. Why take a chance when the downside risk is large? Hence, the resistence to healthcare reform. I am 100% positive that if another country can demonstrate that there is an alternative system that is cheaper and better, then our electorate will have no problem making the switch.
I agree. HRC & Obama are asking Americans to take a flier, as appealing as it sounds. Generally we've had the good sense to avoid fliers and understand that the free lunches are a phony promise. We'll see.
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