To respond to Chris Murray, here are very quick thoughts on why I like the reforms I listed in my earlier post. Many of my reasons relate to prior posts or the links therein.
- Federalizing Medicaid would eliminate large geographic inequities and program disruptions that occur during recessions.
- Preferred tax treatment of employer provided health insurance leads to distortions of the labor markets and perverse incentives.
- Severing of the link between employment and health insurance would maximize portability, eliminate job lock, and reduce workers’ confusion about who pays for premiums.
- Greater transparency and uniformity of health care prices would reduce one of the main health care market failures (lack of pricing information).
- Less provision of unnecessary care would reduce costs but not quality.
This wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but it is long enough.
