The movement towards socialized medicine is strong but widely misunderstood. Many ordinary people see health care as a right and complain that it is too expensive. Some economists also see problems with the existing health care system and propose public-sector alternatives. One serious problem with those who want socialized medicine is that they fail to see the problems that already exist with governmental involvement in health care.
Economists Steven DeLoach and Jennifer Platania claim that employer-provided health care affects the economy adversely. The logic of the DeLoach/Platania argument is relatively straightforward. Since health insurance is a fixed cost per employee, employers have an incentive to increase output by increasing hours worked per worker, rather than by hiring additional workers. Since labor productivity declines as workers work longer, it would be more efficient to hire more workers, rather than to have the same workers work longer…
The primary problem with DeLoach and Platania is that they do not sufficiently account for the effects of existing governmental intervention. FULL ARTICLE
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Well it’s not if you’re suggesting the government as a corrective measure…
Inquisitor:
…both the free-market and grovernment have their deficiencies in the area of health-care provision.
That is why determing which one is better without exact knowledge of the extent of these deficiencies is impossible.
unsatisfied? dissatisfied! why didn’t spellcheck bail me out?
Which is why I suggested Beyond Politics (as well as Unwarranted Intrusions), because both books examine just that – regulation from a theoretical (Public choice school) and empirical vantage. Public choice and Austrian economics come very close to one another.
to owen from lenin (“the state and revolution”):
“To decide once every few years which members of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament–this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary- constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics.”
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