Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care
Arnold Kling

In Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care, economist Arnold Kling argues that the way we finance health care matches neither the needs of patients nor the way medicine is practiced. The availability of premium medicine, combined with patients who are insulated from costs, means Americans are not getting maximum value per dollar spent. Using basic economic concepts, Kling demonstrates that a greater reliance on private saving and market innovation would eliminate waste, contain health care costs and improve the quality of care. Kling proposes gradually shifting responsibility for health care for the elderly away from taxpayers and back to the individual. The idea of matching the health care funding system to needs is very simple, Kling writes. The very poor and the very sick need help paying for health care. The rest of us do not.

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4 reviews from Economics blogs:

EconLog 13 Jul 10:
... Cooperation with the right on free-market causes would need to be supplemented by an equivalent level of cooperation with the left on personal freedom, civil liberties, and foreign policy issues. . . libertarians should be making the point that their differences with the right are every bit as important as their differences with the left. Some of my own thoughts. 1. It was Brink who commissioned me to do a book on health care for Cato, Crisis of Abundance. Intellectually, I consider it a triumph. I think it makes a lasting contribution to the health care debate. Published in April of 2006, I thought it would have a relevant shelf life of a decade, and I stand by that. Cato's permanent on-staff scholars continue to do yeoman work on health care policy, as exemplified by Michael Tanner's comprehensive analysis (self-recommending) of this year's bill. ...
EconLog 15 Jun 10:
... However, some Eastern Europeans are more receptive. To Western Europeans, the Dutch health care system (a sort of Massachusetts plan for the whole country) is a forward-looking, market-oriented approach to health care. At the first conference, I felt obliged to disabuse the audience of that notion and instead present views based on Crisis of Abundance. 9. On financial reform, at least one European was happy with the U. S. reform plans. He thinks it includes some good ideas, such as improved resolution authority for troubled banks. He thinks that it includes bad things that will reduce the ability of U. S. banks to compete, and that will be good for Europe. ...
EconLog 08 Mar 10:
... is all about. What follows are some excerpts from his book, Taming the Beloved Beast, and my own comments. p. 1 health care economists attribute about 50% of the annual increase of health care costs to new technologies or to the intensified use of old ones. What he calls technology is what in Crisis of Abundance I called 'premium medicine, ' because I want to include the increased use of specialists as well as physical capital. Callahan would agree. He agrees that Medicare is unsustainable in its current form. He agrees that minor changes to our current health care system, such as ...
EconLog 12 Jan 10:
... 2. What is the maximum amount that Gruber could have received had he been a full-time government employee? 3. How much was Gruber paid for his work on the Massachusetts plan? Did he get some of that money during the same years he received Federal money? I myself was paid just $5, 000 to write a book on health care reform. I'll admit that I'm jealous of Gruber's gravy train. I dare say that I would bet that a decade from now my ideas on health care policy will stand in better repute than his. ...