Paul Krugman in the New York Times, discounting the only realistic solution to health care affordability:

Let’s ignore those who believe that private medical accounts – basically tax shelters for the healthy and wealthy – can solve our health care problems through the magic of the marketplace.

Krugman’s alternative to the marketplace is nationalizing the health insurance system in the name of efficiency. Perhaps he could help his case by naming any efficient nationalized business — does such a thing exist?

He predictably brings up the Canadian system as an exemplar of allegedly low costs. But Dr. Robert G. Evans, a supporter of the Canadian system, said in a 2002 talk that “Canada already spends as much per capita as any other country outside the U.S., and no doubt much of the money could be spent more effectively than it is now”

And that’s for a system in which sick people wait up to a year for surgery — see our post “Oh, Canada, We Stand In Line For Thee“.

There are many problems with health coverage in the U.S., but key among them is that most services are so subsidized, either by employers or the government, that they are almost free. The result: misuse of resources. Krugman’s model makes this worse, not better.

Too bad Krugman discounts the marketplace — it’s the only solution that will work.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 13th, 2005 at 6:45 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under I knew I'd use my Econ major. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.