Sunday, December 23, 2012

Quote of the day - Health care costs

Well, not quite of today.  I'm just trying to make a dent in my backlog of notes.

"How does Medicaid achieve these lower costs? Partly by having much lower administrative costs than private insurers. It’s always worth remembering that when it comes to health care, it’s the private sector, not government programs, that suffers from stifling, costly bureaucracy."
- "Medicaid on the ballot", Paul Krugman, New York Times, 2012-10-29.

For some counter arguments, see "Krugman Flunks Health Econ 101", John Goodman, National Center for Policy Analysis, 2012-11-05 http://healthblog.ncpa.org/krugman-flunks-health-econ-101/

One thing critics ignore about private sector versus government programs is that government doesn't have CEOs taking home eight-figure salaries and other perks.