Quote

I just want to quote an alternative viewpoint on healthcare reform, pointed out by Victor Fuchs in his fabulous book on health economics, Who Shall Live? Health, Economics, and Social Choice, which you can get on Amazon for something like 10 bucks:

"According to many observers, the US health care system is in "crisis." But a crisis is a turning point, a decisive or crucial point in time. In medicine the crisis is that point in the course of the disease at which the patient is on the verge of either recovering or dying. No such decisive resolution is evident with respect to the problems of health and medical care. Our "sick medical system," to use the headline of numerous magazine and newspaper editorials, is neither about to recover nor to pass away. Instead, the basic problems persist and are likely to persist for some time to come."

Then later:

"There are only two ways to achieve systematic universal coverage: a broad-based general tax with implicit subsidies for the poor and the sick, or a system of mandates with explicit subsidies based on income. I prefer the former because the latter are extremely expensive to administer and seriously distort incentives; they result in the near-poor facing marginal tax rates that would be regarded as confiscatory if levied on the affluent."

Just a thought.