Controlling Healthcare Costs The American Way: Not Doing It
9th October 2009
Megan McArdle cuts to the chase and does an autopsy on the healthcare debate.
Anything you could do to a putative new system, you could do to Medicare. And the reason we haven’t is not that we just thought of comparative effectiveness research, healthcare IT, or strong-arming provider payments last week. These ideas have all been kicking around for a long time, and in the case of the provider payments, have already been tried more than once. Providers learn to game the new payment rules, and if they don’t, they get Congress to undo them.
It’s no good saying that well, we should try to be more like the Netherlands–you can’t build a system on the assumption that you will, suddenly and for no apparent reason, be able to import someone else’s political culture.