tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122860087135730716.post7403641297739853170..comments2024-03-11T00:20:28.670-07:00Comments on Richard H. Serlin: There's nothing more important for Obama to achieve than universal health care.Richard H. Serlinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09824966626830758801noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122860087135730716.post-58169308099171372742008-12-16T10:25:00.000-08:002008-12-16T10:25:00.000-08:00I totally agree with you on healthcare. Points to...I totally agree with you on healthcare. Points to add are: <BR/><BR/>1) lowering the eligibility for Medicare age to 50 would cover a lot of people with festering medical conditions. I personally know people who forgo screening tests and miss out on more definitive diagnoses because they can't afford it. These are educated people who have jobs with inadequate insurance. This is a ticking time bomb for expensive treatments at age 65 as these conditions get worse. We are losing their productivity and failing to treat people humanely. Not only is it the right thing to do, but would save money in the long run. <BR/><BR/>Second, I've been telling anyone who will listen that we need a nationwide diversified risk pool for the higher cost and rarer conditions. We need to get away from these small pools where premiums are priced inefficiently so that premiums are too high and services are limited. A nationwide pool could be actuarially based and spread the risk of rare or expensive conditions. Your suggested trigger of $50,000 would go a long way toward this goal and avoid the burdensome costs that fall on the unlucky households while making the pricing more efficient for everyone.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-122860087135730716.post-77503235961658979382008-11-07T21:02:00.000-08:002008-11-07T21:02:00.000-08:00I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on h...I'm curious to hear more of your thoughts on health care from an economics perspective. I was thinking about this in a recent blog post of mine, & it seems like one of the difficulties in achieving universal health care is that we're trying to drive down the end-user price after it's already been established. Are there are efforts however to drive down the inherent value that goes into producing health care? For instance, making medical school training more accessible to students so that there's less of a demand for doctors? Or cutting back on drug regulations so that they're easier to market?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com