Day: August 9, 2023

Two Typically Tylerian Takes

Allow me a quick pat-self-on-the-back for the alliteration before we proceed, will you?

Right, so how to think about too much (or too little) government in healthcare? Some of us might say one, and some of us might say the other.

How many of us will say “neither”?

I observe also that Obamacare passed, and American life expectancy fell. I do not blame Obamacare for that, but I do notice it. As a result, I have grown increasingly interested in “how can we boost biomedical scientific progress?” and increasingly less interested in “how can we reform health insurance coverage again?” All the more because we seem to be living in a biomedical progress of science golden age.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/07/the-amy-finkelstein-and-liran-einav-health-care-plan.html

Many of us can say “both”, and I very much do. But this specific way of saying “both” I find fascinating:

…imagine a health care policy that stated individuals have a true right to access any health care technology invented up through say…2004 or so. Individuals would be guaranteed “2004 value health care lives.” (In 2004 that certainly seemed pretty good.) But for subsequent health care developments, a free market will reign. Is not guaranteeing basic needs an essential part of the egalitarian argument? Surely not everything needs to be equalized? Anyway, no one believes in guaranteeing individuals protection against all the rare diseases out there, as that would cost too much. So a line will be drawn somewhere.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/03/a-view-that-hardly-anyone-embraces.html

Some points I would like to note here:

  1. Thinking out of the box is hard to do, and needs a lot of reading, and then a lot of thinking. I’m not very good at all three things, and practice is key.
  2. If an issue has remained intractable for a long time, and the debate seems to only get shriller without any resolution, perhaps it is time to consider a solution that lies outside of the framing of the debate.
  3. How do we know when this becomes applicable? See pt. 1
  4. Write every single day. Or train like an athlete, if you prefer.
  5. Read MR every single day. I’m quite serious about all of these, but this last one is the easiest to achieve.