How to Solve the Health Care Crisis
I recently got in a bike crash and separated my shoulder, and my trips to the emergency room and various doctors got me thinking about how difficult to navigate the US health care system really is. Going to the ER, in a great amount of pain required me to wait around for hours before before being seen by a doctor. They were quick to make sure I have insurance, and that opened up levels of care not afforded to the myriad of uninsured patients. After visiting the ER, I called my orthopedist, but he no longer accepts my insurance, so I had to go to the website, find a new orthopedist, make an appointment, realize I didn’t like him, find a new doctor, and so on.
Of course, life does not have to be this difficult. When I go buy a car, I don’t have to work nearly as hard, so why should buying healthcare be any different? In his brilliant book, The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor–and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car!, Tim Harford lays out the difficulties of health care policy as well as how to overcome many of the problems in the US system. This post recounts his solution with some comments of my own.
Posted on Friday, June 6th, 2008
Under: Economics, Policy | No Comments »
A friend who is traveling to India recently received a flier from the Indian Consulate that stated that the Consulate would no longer be processing visa applications directly, but rather, all visa services have been outsourced to a company named Travisa Outsourcing, Inc of New York, NY. Despite the obvious irony that the Indians are choosing to outsource work to the US, the change serves to illustrate the long-term benefits of outsourcing to both the outsourcing country and the recipient of the work. In the end, outsourcing work will lift the economies of everybody involved–not to mention the economies of many countries not involved.