Tag Archives

Archive of posts published in the tag: Fatal Conceit

Federalism and Health Care

Healthcare does more to illuminate the divide in political ideology than any other issue. It merges the ideological and pragmatic limits of central power;  the dispersal of interests (and thus the difficulty of consensus) and the dispersal of knowledge, the ‘fatal conceit’ that any central power can know how to manage complex markets for a vast and diversified nation.  Health care challenges the authority and the competence of central power.

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Nationalizing Bad Outcomes

Imagine the compromises when 100 Senators and 435 Representatives bargain to get their piece of the health care allocation in an atmosphere where bitter partisanship rules every issue.  In other words what seems to work in Europe is not easily transferable to a radically different political and economic environment.   And the complete comparative picture is not as clear as we are led to believe.  Maybe we spend more on health care because we want to.

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Ends and Means

The more we depend on the government to make market decisions, the more we replace  individual choice with political power. This requires more reliance on lobbyists to protect individual and special interests. A market based economy is more tolerant of

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