from The New Yorker, a review on the book America’s Bitter Pill by Steven Brill.  The review is by Malcolm Gladwell.

excerpt:

Goldhill takes a far more radical position than the economic team at the White House does. He believes that most of our interactions concerning health care are actually no different from our transactions concerning anything else: if we trust people to buy cars and houses and food and clothing on their own, he doesn’t see why they can’t be trusted to do the same with checkups, tonsillectomies, deliveries, flu shots, and the management of their diabetes. He thinks that the insurance function—inserting a third party between patients and providers—distorts incentives and raises prices, and has such an adverse impact on quality that health insurance should be limited to unexpected, high-cost occurrences the way auto insurance and home insurance are. These ideas are unlikely to make their way into policy anytime soon. But, in elaborating the market critique of the health-care status quo, Goldhill helps us understand what the argument we’re having right now is about. It is not just a political battle over Obama. It’s a battle over whether health care deserves its privileged status within American economic life.

print