(2005-03-28) Cutler Healthcare

Article about David Cutler's thoughts on Healthcare Reform. He thinks there's not much "waste" since people get good value for the cost, but of course it's hard to tell for sure when nobody's spending their own money. Some encouraging bits about Medicare taking a lead in experimentation for new payment policies to improve quality and prevention.

Arnold Kling attacks the claims about "waste" from a different and detailed perspective. I am prepared to make the following bet: ten years from now, it will be objectively clear that the United States provided significantly better health care to its citizens between 1990 and 2005 than did other developed countries. From the vantage point of 2015, the policy blunder of the past fifteen years will not be that the United States spent too much on health care, but that other countries spent too little.