Comments on: The Economics of Healthcare http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/03/the-economics-of-healthcare/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:05:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: dover http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/03/the-economics-of-healthcare/#comment-3455 dover Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:20:58 +0000 http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/?p=240#comment-3455 Healthcare provision isn't the issue. However it is funded - public, private, or a mixture - it faces an impossible arithmetic conclusion, because demand increases all the time and potential treatments expand all the time. Logically, it can't stop expanding until exactly half the population are doctors and the other half are patients. Thus we should start planning for the time when the priority is denying it, not providing it. Not exactly Soylent Green, necessarily, but we'll need a new kind of paradigm in which denial is a virtue. Possibly self-denial, possibly some widely-accepted rationing ethic. It's coming. Healthcare provision isn’t the issue. However it is funded – public, private, or a mixture – it faces an impossible arithmetic conclusion, because demand increases all the time and potential treatments expand all the time. Logically, it can’t stop expanding until exactly half the population are doctors and the other half are patients. Thus we should start planning for the time when the priority is denying it, not providing it. Not exactly Soylent Green, necessarily, but we’ll need a new kind of paradigm in which denial is a virtue. Possibly self-denial, possibly some widely-accepted rationing ethic. It’s coming.

]]> By: MSU_Charles http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/03/the-economics-of-healthcare/#comment-3454 MSU_Charles Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:55:49 +0000 http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/?p=240#comment-3454 I know this is slightly off the healthcare financing issue you discuss above, but if you haven't seen the below link, you might find it interesting. It is a Cato policy report by U of Chicago Financial Economist John Cochrane on improving private market health insurance. He also has a Journal of Political Economy (I think around 1995 or 1996) article on the issue, but it of course, is much more theoretical. http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9986 I know this is slightly off the healthcare financing issue you discuss above, but if you haven’t seen the below link, you might find it interesting. It is a Cato policy report by U of Chicago Financial Economist John Cochrane on improving private market health insurance. He also has a Journal of Political Economy (I think around 1995 or 1996) article on the issue, but it of course, is much more theoretical.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9986

]]> By: civil_truth http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/03/the-economics-of-healthcare/#comment-3453 civil_truth Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:17:35 +0000 http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/?p=240#comment-3453 ..that we will be facing a modest to moderate displacement in non-medical spending (if we avoid generational warfare) but we muddle through. The pessimistic scenario is that the rising government taxation and spending will cause a downward spiral in overall economic activity (negative multiplier?) such that the government revenues fail to keep in pace with their expenditures, setting up a viscious spiral where and government efforts to raise more revenues cause ever sharpter declines in GNP. Eventually this leads to economic collapse and/or a wave of nationalizations - and we end up with the Ancient Four - War, Famine, Disease, and Deaths. Normally I would think that government leaders would recognize this and put break up the spiral early on. However, we face a situation currently where 1) we are in uncharted economic waters where no on really know what will break the accelerating deflation, and 2) we have political ideology trumping pragmatic solutions. Hence the barring of tax cuts and private business stimulation in favor of government interventions & populist scapegoating. Not to mention our incoherent foreign policy (unless what it's adding up to is we've decided to give fealty to Saudi Arabia and China in return for oil and debt financing). ..that we will be facing a modest to moderate displacement in non-medical spending (if we avoid generational warfare) but we muddle through.

The pessimistic scenario is that the rising government taxation and spending will cause a downward spiral in overall economic activity (negative multiplier?) such that the government revenues fail to keep in pace with their expenditures, setting up a viscious spiral where and government efforts to raise more revenues cause ever sharpter declines in GNP. Eventually this leads to economic collapse and/or a wave of nationalizations – and we end up with the Ancient Four – War, Famine, Disease, and Deaths.

Normally I would think that government leaders would recognize this and put break up the spiral early on. However, we face a situation currently where 1) we are in uncharted economic waters where no on really know what will break the accelerating deflation, and 2) we have political ideology trumping pragmatic solutions. Hence the barring of tax cuts and private business stimulation in favor of government interventions & populist scapegoating. Not to mention our incoherent foreign policy (unless what it’s adding up to is we’ve decided to give fealty to Saudi Arabia and China in return for oil and debt financing).

]]> By: Mike http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/2009/03/03/the-economics-of-healthcare/#comment-3452 Mike Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:09:21 +0000 http://www.redstate.com/blackhedd/?p=240#comment-3452 Soylent Green Soylent Green

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