Reaction Radio

Donald Marron submits:

In a recent post over at Capital Gains and Games, Andrew Samwick makes an important point about the debate over health insurance reform. As Andrew notes, many proponents of a public plan (aka public option aka government-run plan) blame the quest for profits for the ills they see in the private health insurance market.

This is one of those claims that is both true and false. What’s true, again echoing Andrew, is that the search for profits can lead to bad outcomes (e.g., efforts to cover the healthy while avoiding the sick) in our current system. That’s because we haven’t adequately addressed some key problems — most notably adverse selection — that arise in health insurance markets.

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