Friday, December 18, 2009
By very small steps
Pick up the Senate health-care bill�yes, all 2,074 pages�and leaf through it. Almost half of it is devoted to programs that would test various ways to curb costs and increase quality. The bill is a hodgepodge. And it should be.Atul Gawande in the New Yorker this week. Hat tip to James Kwak, who adds the sentence of the day:
So the only political option is incremental reform through small programs that experiment with different ways to change the incentives of private-sector actors at the margin.Yes, a thousand times yes, and it will cost you much, much less than the Senate health-care bill. Why can't they just pass all the experimental programs and leave the crushing taxes behind?
Labels: economics, health care
