Your "left of center" economist believes that markets will provide anything the consumer wants in health care, which may be the most regulated and distorted market in all of America. That's funny, especially since, if he's really a Lefty, he's totally on board with using govt to alter people's economic and social choices in almost every other field. I wonder how he squares that circle? Perhaps the libertarian bent of his econ training (a problem I know a great deal about personally) has overridden his collectivist instincts on some issues, but the cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming at times.
Something like weight loss or hair transplants behave like other markets but most of health care can’t be planned for and the amount you will pay is limitless to save your life. Contrast that with a car which has a value of like $30k and so all of your maintenance costs are in the context of replacement costs. Really the only reason to have some free market forces in our health care system is to give Medicare regulators some idea of what they should pay for procedures and how much they should allocate for them. Our non universal health care system has created more problems than it has solved and it’s pretty dumb that we tiptoe around reforms instead of just socializing it 100% like every other country.
Your "left of center" economist believes that markets will provide anything the consumer wants in health care, which may be the most regulated and distorted market in all of America. That's funny, especially since, if he's really a Lefty, he's totally on board with using govt to alter people's economic and social choices in almost every other field. I wonder how he squares that circle? Perhaps the libertarian bent of his econ training (a problem I know a great deal about personally) has overridden his collectivist instincts on some issues, but the cognitive dissonance must be overwhelming at times.
Something like weight loss or hair transplants behave like other markets but most of health care can’t be planned for and the amount you will pay is limitless to save your life. Contrast that with a car which has a value of like $30k and so all of your maintenance costs are in the context of replacement costs. Really the only reason to have some free market forces in our health care system is to give Medicare regulators some idea of what they should pay for procedures and how much they should allocate for them. Our non universal health care system has created more problems than it has solved and it’s pretty dumb that we tiptoe around reforms instead of just socializing it 100% like every other country.