{"id":678497,"date":"2010-03-01T10:15:31","date_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:15:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/knowledgeproblem.com\/?p=6521"},"modified":"2010-03-01T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2010-03-01T15:15:31","slug":"health-care-end-third-party-payer-or-stop-wasting-my-time-and-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/678497","title":{"rendered":"Health care: end third-party payer, or stop wasting my time and money"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lynne Kiesling<\/em><\/p>\n

I continue to be thoroughly disgusted by the disingenuousness of the health care policy debate in Washington. From a public choice perspective I understand why the debate continues to focus on what I think are the tangential and ancillary questions, and the attempts to tweak and improvise around the edges … but my opinion long has been, and continues to be,<\/p>\n

Unless and until we change the differential tax treatment of employer-funded health insurance and remove the third-party payer incentive problems embedded in it, we will have no meaningful change in health care costs or affordability.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Therefore, all of the time and resources that Congress and the administration are pouring into forcing a health care bill are just wasting my tax money and the time and effort of my elected representatives. What they are doing right now is expensive and wasteful wheel-spinning, well deserving of the name “political theater”.<\/p>\n

Arnold Kling made a related point on Thursday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

There are two ways to approach reducing the use of high-cost, low-benefit procedures. You can have the government tell people what they can and cannot have. Or you can have individuals pay for a larger fraction of the medical procedures that they consume. It really comes down to those choices.<\/p>\n

Advocating either one of those is political suicide, and talking about anything else is a waste of time. The Democrats will not advocate government rationing, and the Republicans will not advocate scrapping most of our current system of third-party payment in medicine. Instead, the summit, like the entire “health reform debate” this year, will be a waste of time.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I do, though, think that Arnold is being too generous when he gives the health care summit participants grades ranging from D+ to F-<\/a>. They are wasting our time and money by refusing to confront and address the core incentive problem, which is the staggeringly distortionary and inefficient coupling of employment and health insurance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynne Kiesling I continue to be thoroughly disgusted by the disingenuousness of the health care policy debate in Washington. From a public choice perspective I understand why the debate continues to focus on what I think are the tangential and ancillary questions, and the attempts to tweak and improvise around the edges … but my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2605,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2Qvv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2605"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678497\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}