A Loose Cannon

[UPDATED: Please see below]

Not really, but I couldn't resist the headline. Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies for the prestigious Cato Institute (and FoIB), has a terrific and timely guest column in todays USA Today. He writes:

"Simply expanding coverage would have little effect on the quality of care, health disparities, or how long we live, nor would it stop free-riders from shifting costs to others. In fact, expanding coverage through government regulation or tax-and-transfer programs would make our problem worse."

Amen.

But that's not all:

"If we want to increase access to health care, our first priority must be to contain costs. Nothing would help more than 200 million cost-conscious consumers."

Which is another way of saying what we've been touting for quite a while: health insurance costs increase because health care costs increase.

He also reminds us that "there are not 47 million U.S. residents who can't get health insurance. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, that Census estimate "appears to overstate the uninsured substantially compared to other surveys."

As they say, read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Commenter Zagreus Ammon has some issues with some of Mr Cannon's conclusions. On his blog, he goes into further depth; he lists 8 areas of contention. This is one of the great boons of the blogosphere: relentless fact-checking and civil disagreement.