Summary: Ben Domenech, editor of the indispensable morning newsletter, The Transom, has published an excellent "top ten" list, which we are happy to reprint with his permission. + + + TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD READ ABOUT HEALTH CARE [From The Transom, September 10, 2012.] There is so much to read these days about health care policy and entitlement reform. But we oftentimes lose sight of the longer term debate about these matters, instead focusing on the arguments dictated by the framework of an election cycle and partisan political lines. Suddenly Republican-leaning writers all have very strong opinions about the workability of competitive bidding despite having no interest in it a month ago, while otherwise intelligent Democratic-leaning writers compose complex apologetics structures for IPAB and the individual mandate. Politics often warps policy debates, but this is a particularly egregious case. So let’s step back for a moment and assess things in terms of the past thirty years or so instead of the past two with a list of essays, books, and other items which make up the Ten Things Everyone Should Read About Health Care. I’ve tried to keep things from getting too dry with this list, but you can tell me if I’ve failed. 1. Milton Friedman: “How to Cure Health Care”, The Public Interest, Winter 2001. http://vlt.tc/ght “The tax exemption of employer-provided medical care has two different effects, both of which raise health costs. First, it leads employees to rely on their employer, rather than themselves, to make arrangements for medical care. Yet employees are likely to do a better job of monitoring medical care providers—because it is in their own interest—than is the employer or the insurance company or companies designated by the employer. Second, it leads employees to take a larger fraction of their total remuneration in the form of medical care than they would if spending on medical care had the same tax status as other expenditures.” 2. Max Gammon: “Health and security: report on the public provision for medical care in Great Britain”, St. Michael’s, 1976. http://vlt.tc/ghu Origin of “the theory of bureaucratic displacement.” “In a bureaucratic system, an increase in expenditure will be matched by a fall in production. Such systems act rather like ‘black holes’ in the economic universe, simultaneously sucking in resources and shrinking in terms of ‘emitted production’.” More on Gammon in this report. http://vlt.tc/ghv 3. H.E. Frech, ed.: “Health Care in America: The Political Economy of Hospitals and Health Insurance”, Pacific Research Institute, 1988. http://vlt.tc/ghx Just about everything you could ever need to know concerning the monopsony power of hospital systems and insurers. Additional literature is here.http://vlt.tc/ghw 4. Joseph Bast, Richard Rue, and Stuart Wesbury, Jr.: “Why We Spend Too Much on Health Care”, Heartland Institute, 1992. http://vlt.tc/gi0 “By first bidding up the price of health care with a payment system that encouraged excessive utilization and spending, and then imposing cost-containment measures that led to cost-shifting, government inadvertently increased the cost of health care to other buyers and changed the way care is delivered. In so doing, government has contributed to a process that has priced health care and insurance out of the reach of millions of Americans. Medicare and Medicaid have given the elderly and poor greater access to health care. However, this benefit must be weighed against the costs borne by taxpayers and other health care consumers.” 5. Richard Epstein, “Mortal Peril,” Basic Books, 2000. http://vlt.tc/gi1 Epstein concentrates on the moral and philosophical case against the false promise universal coverage and in favor of a more modest and more private safety net—but his main thrust is against the idea of health care as a natural human right. 6. J
