The answer is less insurance, not more, and private insurance, not public. In the long run, those health savings accounts are probably the best solution. In the interim, the single most effective way to cut health care costs in a hurry would be to eliminate the tax deduction for employer supplied health insurance. That deduction leads to immense overuse of health care resources, especially by rich people. That’s one good reason to eliminate the deduction, and here’s another: People would start shopping for insurance on their own instead of taking whatever their employers offer, which would make the insurance companies more responsive to consumer demands.
It saddens me that support for universal coverage and a public option has become, in many circles, a sort of litmus test for compassion and caring about the poor. It particularly saddens me to hear the president say that “What we face is a moral issue; at stake are not just the details of policy, but fundamental principles.†It’s the details of policy that change people’s lives. The moral imperative is to get them right.
Steven Landsburg has several sane observations. I don’t agree with all of it, but do recommend the piece for input.
The American health care system desperately needs reform. But there are certain inescapable truths that would-be reformers would do well to heed; otherwise they risk making things worse for everyone, and particularly for the poor. Here are a few of those truths.
(…) The last thing we need is more of the inefficient sort of coverage we’ve got now. The very last thing we need is to make that coverage universal.
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