Health Care and Rationing
This is such a broken record, but as the health care pseudo debate rages I feel it incumbent on me to pass along useful information. I would like to think we were discussing health care but we aren’t. the reason I call the debate ‘pseudo’ is because there has been remarkably little focus on factual debate and an awful lot of yelling, screaming, and outright lying. The right wing see this as an opportunity to nip Obama’s reformist tendencies in the bud. They may well defeat him on this issue. Were that to happen the only definitive outcome is that America will be poorer. Literally poorer. Our system is the world’s least efficient. lack of efficiency implies wastage. Therefore reform is our chance to inject efficiency and save some money for other things – like rebuilding our education system so we don’t have to import engineers.
One of the mis-directional lies being tossed about – apart from the ugly obscenity about ‘death squads’ – is that government intervention brings rationing along with it.
I have tried to deal with that here before. Perhaps I have persuaded you. But perhaps you think that my left of center predilections push me that way. I try to be even handed in economics, which to the shame of academic economists is very hard since they have developed an avowedly right of center theory [aka free market theory] rather than a scientific one that withstands empirical scrutiny. Be that as it may – one factor that all economists, of all political persuasions, agree upon is that all economic systems, both public and private ration things.
In fact rationing is the very reason an economy exists. A market is a method of allocating scarce resources. Any allocation of scarce things implies selecting who gets what and when. That’s rationing. Simple. That the Republicans pretend that markets don’t ration is a massive lie and undercuts the public’s ability to participate in the debate – which is, of course the objective. Don’t let that facts get in the way of a political goal.
Anyway, to my great satisfaction, today’s Financial Times wades in on exactly this point: prices ration. Get over it. Since the FT is hardly a bastion of leftist thinking I thought I would pass the link along and simply let you read their article. It explains itself. It chastises the Republicans for lying. And it sets out the problem well: America wastes money on health care. Money is scarce. We would be better served as a society if we didn’t waste that money. Objecting to Obama’s ideas for saving money is one thing, but at least present an alternative that is not simply status quo ex ante. The one thing we all should know is that what we have is rotten. If the right wingers want to help society then give us a lower cost alternative to the Obama reform. Don’t just turn up with your guns and disrupt the discussion. That’s childish.
And one more thing: the FT article gives us a crucial statistic: America spends as much on Medicare – a government health care system – as many other countries spend on their entire systems. Adding in all the private money we waste spend means we end up allocating twice, on average, what others do. To no effect. Our health outcomes – what we get for our money – are no better, and in many cases are a lot worse. That is a good definition of waste. Spending money and getting nothing back is hardly a sensible long term course of action. Societies that head down that road eventually implode. None of us want that.
So debate. Don’t disrupt.
And leave those childish guns at home: who the heck do you think you’re impressing?
