Democrats’ health-care proposals would entrench status quo

by Brian Schwartz | 1:30 am, June 30, 2009 | Comments Off

Economist Arnold Kling has an excellent essay at National Review on-line. I’ll quote only what Arnold himself has quoted from the article on his blog:

The debate we should be having is over whether restraint in our use of medical services should be initiated by government officials or left to consumers. The Democrats want to avoid that debate. Instead, they make it sound as if they can make excess health-care spending disappear by magic. But even if we were to stipulate for the sake of argument that all of the supposed savings from preventive care, electronic medical records, and eliminating the waste and greed supposedly inflicted by insurance companies and doctors will actually materialize, the excessive use of medical procedures would still be the main problem with our health-care system.

OK, I’ll quote more. I like these parts especially:

Our health-care system is wasteful. … That would be of little concern if individuals were wasting their own money. However, because close to 90 percent of personal health-care spending is paid for by third parties, we are wasting each other’s money.

And:

…private health insurance should be deregulated. Affordable health insurance requires radical changes to the way health-insurance policies are designed today. In order to get there, we need less regulation of health insurance, not more. My hope is that the industry would come up with plans that pay claims to only those who fall within the top 2 or 3 percent in terms of health-care needs; those who need basic care would pay out of pocket. Health insurance would look like fire insurance. Few of us would make claims, and premiums would be affordable.

Read the whole thing, and tell Arnold what you think of it (hopefully positive) here.

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