Suggested Reading for Conservadems: Does Health Care Reform Do Enough On Cost Control?

[flpoljunkie]

Does health-care reform do enough on cost control?

Jon Gruber is a health economist at MIT. But that understates his influence in the field. He was one of the architects of the Massachusetts reforms. In 2005, he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine. In 2006, he received the American Society of Health Economists Inaugural Medal for the best health economist in the nation aged 40 and under. He's unabashedly pro-reform, but he's from the camp of reformers that worry incessantly about the economics of the plan. So I asked him: Are the economics of the plan sound?

Excerpt:

One of my frustrations with the cost-control discussion is that people set this up like a choice between this bill and a bill with more cost control. In reality, it seems more like a choice between this bill and nothing. And this bill does a lot more cost control than nothing.

Here's how I think about this: Do you know Pascal's wager? Why not believe in God? I think of health-care reform similarly. We don't know if we'll really bend the cost curve. But if we do this and we don't do anything, we still go bankrupt in 100 years. We don't lose much. But if we do it and it works, then it's a savior.

It also moves the conversation on cost control in a way that's impossible without this bill. It does real things on cost control, and then it does real things to make cost control more politically viable. It lays the groundwork for doing more. To kill this bill for not doing enough on cost control would be like criticizing the Yankees for not winning the Super Bowl. They won the World Series! They did what they could do!

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/11/does_health-care_reform_do_eno.html