Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
There are a myriad of factors involved in the rising costs of health care, but the biggest factor in rising medical costs? The medical doctors themselves, says one physician......
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
12 Comments:
I just love this one: "If you think that healthcare is expensive now, just wait until the government gives it to you for nothing."
Monopolies-including payer monopolies-are always hostile to consumers. When the consumer isn't the payer, the entire system is put at risk. Consumers don't get what they want, they have no choices. They only get whatever it is that the payer ultimately rations to them. The market's supply/demand/price mechanism is turned upside down and the law of unintended consequences takes control.
Show us all how the U.S. system that has 47,000,000 people uninsured and millions more underinsured is better than Germany's health care system?
Explain why Canada gets essentially the same results that we do for ALL of their citizens for about half of what our system costs.
Oh and um, no anecdotal evidence please. :)
Wow! Way to go with the stunning array of evidence, there Perry.
One physician's opinion!
Wow! Way to go with the stunning array of evidence, there Perry.
One physician's opinion!
Why don't you ask all the Canadians who come to the U.S. every year for health care?
bob wright that is a fascinating thought but it would hardly result in any sort of reliable data.
Any other...thoughts?
As if your figure of 47 million uninsured Americans is valid. Check your bias at the door.
Right now, there are few incentives for both patients and physicians to avoid marginal testing. As direct cost has largely removed for decision making, and most patients feel that more testing equals better care, physicians are happy to comply in the name of customer service and reduced legal liability.
This is a systemic problem, and will only be solved by placing at least some financial responsibility back into the hands of the patient for individual diagnositic testing.
As of now, a person could thank their mechanic for saving them hundreds of dollars in unneed automotive work on one day, then turn around a yell at there physician for not getting a 2000$ MRI of their back (which might have little chance of changing outcomes) the next.
Anonymous 3:51 PM said...
As if your figure of 47 million uninsured Americans is valid. Check your bias at the door.
Tell me who is ignorant and biased after you look at Table 8 in...
DeNavas-Walt, C.B. Proctor, and C.H. Lee. Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005. U.S. Census Bureau., August 2006.
You can find it at:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/p60-231.pdf
anon @ 5:24 --
Bu.. bu.. but! Those are guvmint nummers! Yew can't trust those!
/snark
Medicare and Medicaid are living proof that government funded or subsidized healthcare doesn't work. Not only that, this will only give the politicians one more pot of money to pull from...Think about it.
National Health care is not the answer. Free Market capitalism is the ONLY answer.
Anonymous @ 7:59pm
Maybe Medicare is the reason why US life expectancy catches up to the rest of the industrialized world after age 65. Go look at the OECD data on life-expectancy at birth vs. life-expectancy at age 65.
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