The basic facts on health care are clear: government-run insurance is more efficient than private insurance; more generally, the United States, with the most privatized health care in the advanced world, has a wildly inefficient system that costs far more than anyone else’s, yet delivers no better and arguably worse medical care than European systems.See more of Krugman's post here.
Monday, July 21, 2008
To the libertarian on health care: you're assumptions are wrong
Paul Krugman has a nice post about the challenge that libertarians have in accepting the evidence on health care - that their fundamental assumptions about the efficiency of markets just don't hold up.
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I think there is confusion about the word "efficient" here. The first time we say efficient, we are talking about "efficiency of markets". The second time, we are talking about efficiency in terms of value for the dollar.
Perhaps this is a naive analysis, but one characteristic of an efficient market is that some people will be priced out of the market. This is incompatible with the value we place on providing care for everyone. In this first sense, fully-government-run insurance isn't "efficient" because it's not market-based.
That confusion aside, it is an important question whether we want health care to be market driven in the US.
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