A picture is worth 1,000 words.
Medicare for all is not a bad way to start an end to the Nanny Corporation and to creatively shift private insurance to more productive pursuits.
If Mankiw, et. al., are desperate to use the tax code (long viewed by some economists as providing an unwanted government subsidy to an unwanted subsidy, health insurance), then here's a better proposal:
THE POWER OF COMPOUNDING
The government will match 2-for-1 every dollar that parents put into a health account for their kids at birth (or companies provide as a taxable benefit to their employees). The government covers kids until they are 18. The money growing in their health-savings account covers "catastrophic illness" during their working years. If there is money left, it covers end-of-life costs or gets passed on to the next generation, or else is reclaimed by the government, pro-rata.
Done properly, this could also make strides to improve net national savings, which is a serious problem in the U.S.A.
What's more, getting people off of employer-paid plans has the potential to make older employees attractive to companies. While economists call for seniors to work longer, one of the first-best retorts is to ask American companies seriously to start to design jobs for seniors.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
"I lost a third of my pension and my family lost its healthcare"
