The arrival of the new grad class signals the resumption of regular FUBar sessions. To start things off this week we look at Health Care Reform....again.....still.
The US election campaign has focused attention on this issue again, and it hasn't only been an argument over whether the Obamacare Act is the spawn of Satan or the Messiah. Canada's tax-financed single-payer system (which only American writers seem to refer to as Medicare, confusingly) gets regularly dragged out and either lauded or maligned, and the attached Bloomberg article is a case of the former. It includes some dodgy claims (if someone can explain 'Ryan's block grants should grow at medical cost inflation plus the rate of growth in the Medicaid-eligible population, so that grants increase during hard times' I'd appreciate it). It also includes an often-heard claim about the clear inferiority of the US Health Care system, namely '...Canada's actual health outcomes are better on measures ranging from infant mortality to life expectancy.'
That is to say, Uhmurikans are spending more to get less. What dopes.
Well, Avik Roy of Forbes calls this claim a myth, and provides data to back that up. Does his piece convince you that US health-care consumers are just on average well-off folks who are willing to spend more to get better health outcomes?
If so, does this mean that a November Republican landslide that actually resulted in the repeal of ObamaCare (PPACA to health-econ geeks) would be a good thing for the US? (That this would leave the door open for Canadians to head south for care when needed doesn't count.) Paul Krugman doesn't think so, and he explains why in his usual calmly reasoned, dispassionate way. Megan McArdle thinks Krugman is full of....well, read her piece. Krugman aside, economists are generally not of the view that someone other than the consumer of a service is best-equipped to make decisions about it, but is there perhaps really something different about health care? Put bluntly, is it really different than auto repair?
As to what the US (and Canada?) should do about their current health care systems, Roy has an answer - become Switzerland (but no yodeling, hopefully). He makes his case in the last piece, but even ignoring political feasibility, I don't know. How is the 'adverse selection death spiral' to be avoided, exactly?
