Comments on: Any Hope for a Health Care Debate Based on Facts?

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 01:01:34 +0000

sorry, Andrea, it’s

i’ll put that in.

By: Margaret

Margaret — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:27:52 +0000

I’ll tell you what’s penny wise and pound foolish: covering erectile dysfunction treatments but not covering birth control pills!

By: Andrea

Andrea — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:22:33 +0000

Instead of linking to Goolsbee’s essay, you linked to his Wiki profile…what’s the review on which this post is based, so we can read it too?

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 23:15:07 +0000

PS: This book on the French system looks particularly interesting; I eagerly anticipate its publication:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pvd/

here’s the author’s primer on French health care:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/pvd/Primer.htm

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:06:36 +0000

Thanks, Daniel. That’s a very interesting post, and the links in it are definitely edifying.

Perhaps one rule of thumb for the health debate should be: anyone writing online about it should link to the underlying sources and studies they’re basing their commentary on. I look forward to seeing exactly what “expensive procedures” Goolsbee has empirical evidence about re wait times and denials. I like CMWF-style scorecards because they tend to a) commensurate many different measures of quality/access/cost containment and b) allow the reader to break-out exactly how each measure is done.

And I look forward to reading your piece on the justification of a universal health care system.

By: Daniel Goldberg

Daniel Goldberg — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:51:04 +0000

Actually. as to ERs, the best evidence suggests that wait times in Canadian ERs -- as opposed to primary care -- is as bad, if not worse than in the U.S. This evidence belies the notion that ERs are overcrowded in the U.S. because so many lack access to care. If that were the primary causal factor, one would think that ER wait times would be significantly lower in countries where all have access to primary care. I have a post on this here.