Take the Cure
Over at his Serious Medicine Strategy blog, Jim Pinkerton -- who I hope will be a Ricochet contributor soon -- knits together two things we've been talking about here on Ricochet: America's declining position as the world's great entrepreneurial engine; and the small-time thinking of Obamacare:
Let the Democrats own the redistribution of health-care dollars and the management of scarcity; Republicans have a chance to own the much more powerful issue of solving health problems.
Rather than running up a $1 trillion bill, as Obamacare will do, such a strategy promises actually to add to the national wealth.... Already we have seen cost crashes in many health sectors: Treatment for heart attacks, for instance, was always expensive, as was open-heart surgery. Then came stents, statin drugs, and angioplasties. Now heart disease is cheaper to treat — but that treatment became cheaper only after lots of R&D investment was made in response to strong consumer demand. Which is to say, cardiac care became cheaper because we spent more on it, not less.
Along the way, health care has become a big business, giving profits and jobs to millions of Americans. In the United States today, health care provides 14.3 million jobs; ten of the 20 fastest-growing occupations are health-related. And the United States enjoys a major comparative advantage in health care: Already, we take in some $5 billion a year from medical tourism, as well-off foreigners visit us for access to the best medical care the world has to offer. Health care is what economists call a “superior good,” meaning that its consumption rises with income, or even faster than income. As new middle classes spring up in China and India, we have the opportunity to sell to the world ten times, or a hundred times, the $5 billion worth we already are selling.
Interesting idea.
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May '10
Re: Take the Cure
So what is the proposal? We will see a booming medical tourism industry?