Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Independent Institute Names Winners of 2010 Templeton Fellowships Essay Contest

OAKLAND, Calif., September 27, 2010—The Independent Institute announces the winners of its 2010 Sir John M. Templeton Fellowships Essay Contest!

First Prize in the junior faculty division for untenured college teachers went to Evgeniy Gentchev for his essay, “Making the Case: Effectively Advocating an Old Idea in Modern Times.” An associate professor of strategy and international business at Northwood University in Cedar Hill, Texas, Mr. Gentchev is also a contributing author of In Defense of Capitalism and co-editor of When We Are Free.

Click here to read to full press release.

Click here to read the winning essays.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Keynes vs Hayek - EduMocuDocu Music Video



This video was created by John Papola and Russ Roberts. Visit them at http://econstories.tv

Friday, January 22, 2010

$3.5 trillion over the next decade

For a fuller discussion of the problem of high health care costs, read my analysis on Scribed (link below):

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With the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts and the continuous public focus on the economy, the present health care reform effort in Congress appears stalled. Whatever happens to it, it is worth considering how much it would have cost to provide coverage under the current cost structure to the 15% of the US population, which is currently uninsured.

Much of the media latched onto the talking points of “budget neutral” and “deficit reducing over 10 years.” But these are nebulous concepts, at best. Whether something is budget neutral simply depends on how much redistribution happens through the government. The better question is how much will it cost. So here are a few simple, back-of-the-napkins calculations based on data provided by the Kaiser Family Foundation, The Congressional Budget Office, and The Congressional Research Service. Most of the data is from 2007 since the period of 2006-2008 is the time frame for which there is the most complete research and information. Ten or twenty percent adjustments of these figures don’t substantially alter the final result.

So covering the uninsured under the present cost structure would look something like this:

Private insurance covered a total of 172 million non-elderly Americans for approximately $900 billion. If we assume the 45 million currently uninsured are added to the rosters of private insurers, that’s an increase of 26% in customers for the insurance companies. (It doesn’t matter whether people are forced to pay directly the cost of health premiums, or do so through taxes, or subsidies.) Assuming costs are proportionate, annual health care spending will increase by 26% of $900 billion or by $234 billion.

The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that by 2019, health care costs would double. Proportionately, this means that the $234 billion per year will grow to $468 billion per year over the next decade. Assuming a linear increase, the average annual cost over the next decade would be $351 billion per year. Thus it will cost $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years to cover the people who are presently uninsured.

This calculation is clearly an oversimplification, but the assumptions made or ignored affect the cost estimates both positively and negatively. For example, some of the money that is currently spent by the uninsured out of pocket will no longer be spent out of pocket but through the insurance program. So the net increase in costs may be less than the $234 billion estimate. On the other hand, as people gain health insurance coverage, they tend to consume more health services, which will result in an overall increase in the consumption of health services, thus growing the dollar amount beyond the $234 estimate. Furthermore, the simplified estimate above ignores any adverse selection effects – the notion that the people who currently don’t have health coverage, on balance, require more health services than the ones who are covered.

Even if my simple estimate overstates the costs by a factor of two, and it doesn’t cost $3.5 trillion over the next decade but only half as much, the implication is clear – without dealing with the high and rising costs of health services, it will be very difficult to have broader coverage and to avoid the economic disaster caused by unsustainable health care expense levels.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Health care costs in the US - why so high?

If the US health care industry were its own economy, it would be large enough to have a seat at the G8 table. It provides the most expensive health care in the world, though not necessarily the best, and it’s not accessible to millions. It is becoming a large and unsustainable burden on Americans and on the US economy. Both conservatives and liberals have enough reasons to demand a significant reform in the way the system operates but current reform efforts are largely misdirected.

The real cause of high and rising health care costs is either misidentified or ignored by lawmakers. Artificial villains are designated (malpractice lawyers, health insurers), which further detracts the public discourse, policy analysis, and political decisions from focusing on and removing the true drivers of costs. I recently researched and wrote an analysis of US health care costs, which concludes that the key underlying problem in our health care system is the inefficiency of doctors and hospitals.

Click on the "View my documents on Scribd" link below to read or download my analysis. The link takes you to Scribd, which hosts the paper.

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