Great interview in the WSJ.
I begin with the obvious question. “The health-care legislation? It’s a bad bill,” Mr. Becker replies. “Health care in the United States is pretty good, but it does have a number of weaknesses. This bill doesn’t address them. It adds taxation and regulation. It’s going to increase health costs—not contain them.”
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.”
The new bill doesn’t permit purchasing insurance across state lines? That’s 80% of the problem in US healthcare right there, and is so easy to fix. Nuts.
skepticlawyer
27 Mar 10 at 6:49 pm
Remember the one sensible thing Brian Howe tried in his whole career, the co-payment? If only they’d had the guts to stick with it.
pedro
27 Mar 10 at 7:12 pm
“As he speaks, Mr. Becker appears utterly at ease. He wears loose-fitting clothes and slouches comfortably in his chair. His hair, wispy and white, sets off his most striking feature penetrating eyes so dark they seem nearly black. Yet those dark eyes display not foreboding, but contentment. He does not have the air of a man contemplating national decline”
Obviously a man of penetrating acumen – the WSJ journalistic skills again on display!!
“Health care in the United States is pretty good” wow! must be a tenured academic to demonstrate such perspicacity
ennui
27 Mar 10 at 10:25 pm
““Health care in the United States is pretty good” wow! must be a tenured academic to demonstrate such perspicacity”
I think Becker might have meant that the doctors aren’t trained in Burkina Faso and the hospitals better than mud huts.
pedro
28 Mar 10 at 10:25 pm