Legal Commentary

The Free Market And Health Care

By Big Tent Democrat

I know very little about health care delivery. But one thing I do know -- health care delivery is not a normal market and applying the standard free market platitudes to it is just plain silly. Greg Mankiw does that today and Paul Krugman has the appropriate response:

[E]conomists have known for 45 years — ever since Kenneth Arrow’s seminal paper — that the standard competitive market model just doesn’t work for health care: adverse selection and moral hazard are so central to the enterprise that nobody, nobody expects free-market principles to be enough. To act all wide-eyed and innocent about these problems at this late date is either remarkably ignorant or simply disingenuous.

I say disingenuous.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 28, 2009 (boomark / email).