Category Archives: Health care

"The Market for Lemons" and Its Implications

An article by Bruce Schneier in Wired Magazine, “How Security Companies Sucker Us With Lemons,” which we found thanks to Slashdot, discusses the work of Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof on markets with asymmetrical information: Why are there so many bad security products out there? It’s not just that designing good security is hard […]

Democrats Lose on Having Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices

The failure of the Democrats to win authority for Medicare to negotiate drug prices is an inexcusable defeat. Anyone who is even modestly up on this issue knows that the scary problem with burgeoning entitlements isn’t Social Security, it’s Medicare, and Medicare is out of control because our whole health system is run for the […]

Health Care Reform Proposals: Still Off the Mark

Mark Thoma has a good post about the discussion on Hamilton Project director Jason Furman’s health care proposal, which in a nutshell argues that the way to lower health care costs is to have consumers bear more of the costs. That’s the thinking behind Health Care Savings accounts,but Furman tweaks the idea, deeming the original […]

Market Failure I: "Money-Driven Medicine"

I always take note when a writer takes a position that is contrary to his usual stance. Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution is an intelligent and thoughtful commentator, but hews too closely to free market orthodoxy for my taste. But his review of Maggie Mahar’s Money- Driven Medicine, a hard-hitting critique of health care, American […]

Learning From the Mistakes of the 1994 Health Care Proposal

Mark Thoma has featured an excellent LA Times commentary by Ezra Klein, “This time, we want health care reform.” Klein highlights the fundamental challenge of any reform proposal – what do you do with the incumbents, the insurers, big Pharma, the big hospitals – and what process do you use to either gain their support […]

What Nukes Would Do To Big US Cities

Those who remember the paranoid days immediately following September 11 may recall Nuke-O-Matic. The site let you pick a location and size of nuclear weapon, and then see how extensive the damage would be, with concentric circles color coded for the level of devastation. This article, “Study details catastrophic impact of nuclear attack on U.S. […]

Go Ahead, Be Fat and Happy

So advises the Wall Street Journal, in a commentary, “Worth the Weight,” by Arthur Brooks. Now contrarian articles usually make for good reading, and presumably that was the reason the WSJ ran this piece. Oh, it’s in the Saturday edition going into the long Presidents’ Day weekend, a good time for lighter fare (no pun […]

Cancer Link to Genetically Modified Potatoes?

Before we go any further with this item, in which rats in a study developed cancer from consuming genetically modified potatoes, it’s important to note that this was one study and the study was “badly flawed”. Half the rats died (which half?) and the results were based only on the survivors. But this item post-worthy […]

Krugman on Health Care Expenses

On Friday, Paul Krugman, the New York Times’ economics op ed writer, published a story,”The Health Care Racket,” that without saying so, appeared to be in response to the Wednesday Wall Street Journal page one story, “Fights Over Health Care Claims Spawn a New Arms Race” (see our analysis here). The WSJ story delved into […]

What Has Happened to the Rule of Law?

No, I am not talking about rendition or signing statements or warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. I am concerned about the fact it has become acceptable for corporations to welsh on their agreements. Exhibit 1: a page one story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Fights Over Health Claims Spawn a New Arms Race.” The article […]

Right vs. Left on Health Care Costs

A very good post from Brad De Long on long-term health care cost drivers. In essence, he says that the views of the right and left on what to do about health care costs will be overwhelmed by the reality of the high cost of treating chronic diseases like diabetes. It’s an excellent set of […]

Connecting the Dots: Credit Cards and Health Care

We’ve commented in past posts on the relatively new-found freedom of banks to charge interest rates that once would have been deemed usurious, the further sop of an overly-creditor-friendly bankruptcy bill, and the efforts of the Pentagon to push back against some of the lenders’ more extreme practices, namely products that carry interest rates of […]

Economist Writers Argue That Emergency Room Care Really Isn’t Costly

One of the dangers of blogging is that it is easy to shoot from the hip, so I hope I am not guilty of responding in kind to a remarkably fact-devoid post from the Economist’s Free Exchange. This post, which argues that the savings of having a health care system that substitutes preventive care for […]

Banks and the Bankruptcy Law

Usury is becoming a hot topic. We posted on it a few days ago; it is also featured in a January 13 New York Times Op-Ed piece, “Banks Gone Wild” by Joe Lee and Thomas Parrish, which was then picked up in the blogsphere by Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View. From the Times: I owe about […]