Monday, August 26, 2013

Health Care and Complexity

Aaron Carroll:
That said, if you want to have a discussion on the merits of making the American Health Care system look like Singapore’s, I’m on board. Let’s do it. But what I’ll fight against – and call out – are the people who do that with lots of “buts”. You want Singapore, but you don’t want the mandated savings accounts. You want Singapore, but you don’t like government involved in purchasing decisions. You want Singapore, but you oppose centralized budgets. You want Singapore, but you oppose government subsidies.
This was partially in response to Tyler Cowen:
Now enter Aaron Carroll, who tries to argue Singapore is moving in an ACA-like direction.  His post has been cited numerous times, but it is not insightful nor does it show much curiosity about the new changes in Singapore.  It is mostly a polemic against Republicans.  In any case the new Singaporean emphasis on taking care of the elderly isn’t well understood by a comparison with ACA.
 In some ways I think they are both making very good points, albeit very different ones.  In Cowen's defense, health care has become so tightly bound to partisan politics in the United States that a strong pro-ACA line is going to look like an attack on Republicans, even if it is modeled on a Republican plan.  That's rather unfortunate but true. 

On the other hand, one of the ways to argue for a system is to find historical (or, even better, contemporary) examples of a particular approach working.  Innovation is likely to be tried by smaller groups first.  So Democracy works out so-so in Athens and people begin to tweak it.  Eventually you get the UK model and the US model of democracy, neither of which look like the original.

The problem with this approach is that it requires one to be extremely clear about what the effects of these tweaks will be.  The United States appears to be in an equilibrium where, at a population level, it costs a lot and delivers middle of the road outcomes.  Moving further into that space (and away from programs that are cheaper and deliver better results) requires a very clear argument for why we think there is a local (or perhaps even the global) maxima out there. 

So the problem with Singapore is that there seems to be real disagreement over whether specific pieces are essential or not.  You also have a very different economy -- only 5 million people with an unemployment rate running in the 2-3% range.  While they have no minimum wage, the government tends to be the largest shareholder in Singapore companies and thus excessive wage inequality can be handled at the ballot box.  These design features can make a mandated savings program work really well.  But we also have what looks a lot like a command economy (just one that is small enough and distributes decision-making enough that they are not overwhelmed by complexity).  In any case, much of the US problems would be well handled by a 2% unemployment rate where people would be able to reliably save against disaster and have a decent chance to get a new job (and notice that Singapore is a single city, so there are no relocation frictions if you lose your job in a part of it with few opportunities -- you just commute longer as a result). 

So the problem is trying to reduce the number of moving parts.  I suspect that, despite its huge flaws, this is why the Canadian system keeps coming up.  It is based in a nearby country with a similar type of economy, lots of immigrants, lots of regionalism, and delivers equivalent outcomes (overall) for less overall cost.  It also encourages economic risk taking by making the risk of being uninsured negligible which can also be a benefit. 

But trying to import external health care systems is tough -- they are complex and have lots of points where it is unclear if the piece is essential or merely nice to have. 


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