What's Wrong with Health Insurance?
A conversation with Dale Steinreich
In this episode, I speak with economist Dale Steinreich about our dysfunctional health-care system (in the US), and about health insurance in particular.
What is wrong with health insurance? Why does it so often seem to operate against the interests of its consumers, rather than for their benefit? Does this represent some kind of failure of the free market? Or is something else at work here?
We go into the nature of health "insurance" in an interventionist marketplace, and the history of how we got here. This is an insightful episode, and you'll come away with a better understanding of why this industry is so dysfunctional.
Dale's original article on the topic is here (audio here). His more recent paper is here.
His review of John Goodman's "Priceless" is here.
The video version of the episode is here:
I have always believed that healthcare and insurance need to get a divorce. Every specialty group is peer reviewed by top level board certified professionals from those specialty areas. I have a friend retired but who was double board certified in nukes and radiology and ran both departments at a major teaching hospital. She still evaluates and consults for those specialty areas and that scoring info is out there. If states were to start consumer coops, they could access this information by service areas and bargain on prices with the top providers. The current system is just this broken: two people can enter the same hospital for the same procedure, performed by the same physician and, depending on insurance coverage, costs can vary by multiples of five or more. Federal systems do not work, never will. And insurance is the crux of the problem.