QandO
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June 25, 2004 Supply and Demand, even in health care Matt Yglesias makes a good rhetorical, but poor economic, point... The right, meanwhile, increasingly seems to be populated by people who get a headache when they try and think seriously about the health care issue and, therefore, are eager to embrace excuses for not discussing it.The left, meanwhile, increasingly seems to be populated by people who get a headache when they try and think seriously about the ever-present economic problem of how scarce resources are allocated and, therefore, are eager to "solve" it by fiat. Actually, Matt understands this issue perfectly well, as he has criticised rent control - another egregious example of wrong-headed cost-shifting in the name of "the public good". Now, it may be true that socialized medicine will, in some ways, be better than what we have now...but it doesn't require a fistful of Tylenol to understand that socialized medicine may simply be the better of two bad ideas. And there are better ideas out there. Unfortunately, both parties increasingly seem to be populated by people who get a headache when they try and think seriously about the health care issue and, therefore, are eager to embrace excuses for not discussing it. Or, at least, pretending our only options are "what we have now" and "socialized medicine". |