In Britain, the universal health care system employs 1.4 million people, the third largest employer in the world. With that type of advocacy for a program, it is virtually impossible to eliminate. This is what would occur to the U.S. if we adopt any type of universal health care or government system. Whenever people are able to enlist the government to support them, they are not likely to give up the support easily. The attempt by the Obama Administration to push the universal care system is pushing the U.S. away from liberty and more toward government control of our lives. The incentives of the system now existing are basically wrong, as I noted in a previous post, but could be corrected without too much trouble; and they are wrong because of government interention to begin with.
The employer based system we now have was instituted after WWII when government wage and price controls would not allow employers to raise wages. The driving force behind cost increases in health care was the government paying for it.
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"The incentives of the system now existing are basically wrong, as I noted in a previous post, but could be corrected without too much trouble; and they are wrong because of government interention to begin with."
ReplyDeleteI might argue that another way to look at this health care "issue" is from the instituitional perspective. That is, the perverse incentives that Boyes notes in his post and the unintended consequences are a result of an emergent institutional framework.
That said, I am not as sanquine about the ability to change the institutional framework.
I am thinking now of the path dependence argument that North advances (see my most of Aug. 12). To the degree that North is correct about path dependence, it might well be that the institutions (both formal and informal) that have emerged and evolved in the area of health and care for health may dictate the future direction (growth of Leviathan).