May 7, 2013

Entitlements: What Difference Does it Make?

By Christopher Chantrill
Last week they announced the results of the second year of the Oregon experiment, asking the important question: what difference does Medicaid make? The answer, as Megan McArdle reports, is not much, at least not in measurable health outcomes. In this the Oregon experiment agrees with the experts. The RAND study done in the 1970s and reported in the 1980s found that giving people health insurance didn't make a difference to their health; it just increased their consumption of health care. And that aligns with the experts cited by James C. Riley in Rising Life Expectancy: A Global History. Health care (called bio-medicine) is just one of six factors ("public health, medicine, wealth and income, nutrition, behavior, and education") undergirding our healthy, wealthy way of life. You can check out the details at my "Experts Agree on Healthcare" here. But that Oregon result set me to thinking not just about government healthcare but entitlements in general. Isn't the whole point of...(Read Full Article)