Well Knock Me Over With a Feather

By Ezra

I don't know when the New York Times worked up the courage to actually propose some health care solutions, but it's certainly a refreshing change. This article explaining that the health care deduction on your income taxes is an absurdly regressive measure that entrenches the perverse and inequitable elements of the system is great stuff, but watching it venture a step further and sketch out how the money could be re-channeled to create universal care is a near-revelation. I didn't know newspapers could be so constructive! And then to straight up explain that Americans will resist this solution out of self-interest...I mean, man, I need a cigarette over here.

Whew. That was hot.

By the way: Kate'll be back on the site tomorrow, so if you've not yet thrown a buck to her Amazon gift certificate (and that includes nearly all of you), now would be a good time.

Comments

[Martin]

Ezra,

$130bn sounds like a lot of money, and Cutler certainly makes it sound like enough money, but there are a lot of assumptions that are required to convert $130bn/year into a universal health insurance scheme. Consider, for example, that Medicaid consumes some $300bn a year, is growing 7% a year, and still leaves us with 45 million people without insurance on any particular day. A true solution, using the existing delivery system for health care, is likely to cost at least $800 billion a year, based on quick calcs from the MEPS database. I wish solutions in health policy were as easy as Cutler and the NYTimes makes it appear.

[StealthBadger]

Just a pointer - you may want to do a global rebeuild on your site, several comments pages are missing.

Will donate after payday ^.^

[Kate]

I'm a little web challenged and can't figure out how to rebuild the entire site. I'm working on it! Thanks for the tip.