In his speech to the American Medical Association, President Obama stated, “Today, we are spending…almost 50 percent more per person than the next most costly nation.” The sophisticated listener understood the implications of Obama’s message: things that can’t go on won’t. Our medical costs, now nearly one-fifth of current GNP, twice that of food, can’t […]
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Unless deliberately randomized, as in drawings for moose permits or draft lottery numbers in the 1970s, decisions are based on information and incentives. It follows that to change behavior, people’s information and the incentives to act on that information must change. Little else, surely not professed concern, will suffice. Well-intentioned people who ignore or discount […]
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On January 7th, the Sheriff’s Office Report in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle noted, “A man fell from his roof on Cottonwood Road while trying to reattach roofing that had blown loose in the wind.” The last thing I remember, before becoming semi-awake in the American Medical Response ambulance, was reaching to sink the last roofing […]
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Dear Brian, I thoroughly enjoyed talking with you at your Bridger Canyon fundraiser. I am favorably impressed with your intelligence, knowledge, and personality. I share your concern about the complex issues surrounding the pharmaceutical industry. Congress recently approved a prescription drug benefit for Medicare costing $40 billion per year and I expect more. You’ve supported […]
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In its foreward, Vice President Al Gore announces that Our Stolen Future “raises compelling and urgent questions that must be answered.” The book has been promoted as the next Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s 1962 book that spawned much of the environmental movement. More likely, it marks the end of an era of gullibility, hysteria, and […]
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THE president and Hillary Rodham Clinton are selling the outlines of their health-care program to the nation. We have been told to expect many good things from it. Universal access, coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanded basic care would benefit many people. But it is likely that fully implementing a nationalized health-care plan will cost […]
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