Here's another view on Cowen's article by Dean Baker in his Beat the Press:
NYT Protectionists Strike Again
The NYT is so dogmatically protectionist in some areas that it will not
even allow discussion of free trade on its pages. The protectionist
doctrine is perhaps nowhere deeper than in the treatment of health care.
The United States has a hugely inefficient health care system. We pay
more than twice as much per person as the average for other wealthy
countries yet we rank near the bottom in most measures of health
outcomes. Reform is blocked by the power of the insurance and
pharmaceutical industry, as well as the doctors' lobbies.
The obvious solution would be to make it easier for people in the United
States to take advantage of the more efficient health care systems
elsewhere in the world. But the NYT never even has allowed this idea to
be discussed in its pages.
Instead, we get diatribes from protectionists like Tyler Cowen, who
warns that we will be forced to pay 60-80 percent of income in taxes by
the end of the century if we don't change the current structure of
Medicare. (You get these numbers by assuming that health care costs
continue to grow much faster than income, leading to large budget
deficits, and that Congress lets the deficits get ever larger [never
raising taxes or cutting spending] so that by the end of the century the
country has an incredible debt and interest burden. It's not a serious
projection, but it's good for scaring people.)
The U.S. health care system is seriously broken. If the political system
is too corrupt to fix it, then people in the United States should be
allowed to take advantage of health care systems that work. It should be
possible to talk about trade in health care services in a serious newspaper.
Larry Shute
Michael Perelman wrote:
Tyler Cowen is my favorite conservative. Sometimes I
actually agree with -- not very much, but sometimes I
do. Today in his New York Times article he advocates
means testing for Medicare. He acknowledges the
possibility that means testing will make Medicare a
welfare program, causing it to lose support -- but he
suggests that things are so dire we do not have
another choice he does not seem to take seriously Mark
Thoma's suggestion that single-payer could create
substantial cost savings.
I am not sure how big a threat Medicare really is.
Any sane political system would find massive savings
in the defense budget, but sanity is a scarce
commodity. Taxes on the very rich and taxes on purely
speculative activities could go a long way to
supplement Medicare. Unfortunately, such policies
will not be discussed outside of third-party politics.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/business/economy/20view.html?em&ex=1216699200&en=79692570ab41cad4&ei=5087%0A
-- Michael Perelman
Economics Department California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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