Talented Flee Universal Health Care
by Travis Pantin
Wed, 5 Dec 2007 at 12:42 AM
Universal health insurance causes the most skilled doctors to gravitate
toward fields such as elective plastic surgery, a professor at the Harvard
Law School, J. Mark Ramseyer, writes in a recent paper.
In his paper, "Talent and Expertise under Universal Health Insurance," Mr.
Ramseyer studies the example of Japan, which has had universal health
coverage for more than 40 years. Such systems necessarily increase the
demand for medical services, he explains, and so in "the face of the
increased demand, the government suppresses costs by suppressing prices."
Because the Japanese national health insurance does not cover medically
superfluous services such as elective plastic surgery, Mr. Ramseyer
hypothesizes that the most talented doctors would shift toward areas of
expertise that are less subsidized, and therefore not price-capped.
The data supported his hypothesis: In Japan, cosmetic surgeons are
considerably more qualified than their peers, especially in terms of
educational pedigree.
"This situation creates an incentive for the best doctors to shift into the
medically least necessary sectors, and invest in skills and facilities at
higher rates than their peers," Mr. Ramseyer writes. He also posits that
because the most talented and best-trained physicians will end up practicing
in the least regulated sectors like cosmetic surgery, these less important
sectors will produce the best results.
Blogging on the Weak Dollar
On Marginal Revolution (marginalrevolution.com), Tyler Cowen sums up much of
what the best economics bloggers have been saying about the weak dollar. All
of the views "express different degrees of optimism about the current state
of the dollar," he says.
In contrast to Brad Delong (delong.typepad.com) and Don Boudreaux
(cafehayek.typepad.com), Mr. Cowen characterizes his own view as one of
"naďve" optimism. "Caution is always in order but right now equity prices
and interest rates are not predicting ruin. Furthermore growth and recovery
are the natural and more likely state of affairs in a relatively free
economy, so I will believe in them until I see otherwise," he writes.
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