I don't have time to post much, but I want to collect some links regarding health care:
Megan Mcardle on the political implications
Greg Mankiw on the CBO scoring
Bryan Caplan on the separation of health and state. And again on what we owe (morally), the "deserving sick"
David Henderson quoting Gary Becker:
Drafting a good bill would have been easy, he continues. Health savings accounts could have been expanded. Consumers could have been permitted to purchase insurance across state lines, which would have increased competition among insurers. The tax deductibility of health-care spending could have been extended from employers to individuals, giving the same tax treatment to all consumers. And incentives could have been put in place to prompt consumers to pay a larger portion of their health-care costs out of their own pockets.
"Here in the United States," Mr. Becker says, "we spend about 17% of our GDP on health care, but out-of-pocket expenses make up only about 12% of total health-care spending. In Switzerland, where they spend only 11% of GDP on health care, their out-of-pocket expenses equal about 31% of total spending. The difference between 12% and 31% is huge. Once people begin spending substantial sums from their own pockets, they become willing to shop around. Ordinary market incentives begin to operate. A good bill would have encouraged that."
Tyler Cowen on how flimsy the insurance mandate penalty is, and how easy it is to game.
Arnold Kling on how the health care bill was financed:
Relative to current law, I am willing to grant that the legislation will reduce the deficit (assuming no glitches, such as failure to project expenses properly or failure to follow through on promised benefit cuts). It does so by cutting future Medicare benefits by X, and then using a little bit less than X to pay for new subsidies. But in order to actually have a budget that does not collapse by 2030, we have to cut future Medicare benefits by much, much, more than X, and not use the cuts to pay for anything else.
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