James Pethokoukis

Arnold Kling sums things up perfectly:

I believe that America’s health care system should be reformed. Medicare is unsustainable. Employer-provided health insurance should never have been instituted in the first place, and it is becoming more dysfunctional every year. I would like to deal with the structural issues that bias our system in favor of specialists, fragmented care, and credentialism. Americans need to learn how to make reasonable judgments about medical procedures that have high costs and low benefits.

None of these problems is addressed by the bills in Congress. This year’s health care debate is proof that top-down reform is not going to work. The more the system is politicized, the less likely it is that it will change. The only direction for reform is market-oriented policy that by today’s standards seems radical and unacceptable. In contrast, the politicians are struggling mightily to do what amounts to minor tinkering and tampering.