"Preemies, Health Care Reform and the Cost-Benefit Conundrum"

A concise look at one-half of the medical care issue. Medical care can do amazing, wonderful things. But sometimes only at, currently, great expense. Is trying to save a baby born at 25 weeks worth $300,000? The authors finds this a terribly difficult question to answer. The demand side of medical care poses many such intractable problems.

Instead of endlessly debating the economics and philosophy of the demand--including delegating such questions to the tender mercies of "expert" panels--we should instead strive to increase the supply. More supply means lower prices and higher quantities. Allow markets to work; remove barriers to technological advance and greater competition. As Arnold Kling and Nich Schulz write in their new book, From Poverty to Prosperity:

. . . overcoming market failure requires innovation. Innovation is best delivered by markets. It is rarely delivered by government. Hence, the paradoxical conclusion is that markets are often the best solution to market failure.

Comments

[jorod]

We should subsidize medical students the way we subsidize law students.