An Unhealthy Proposal
25 August 2006
Editor, The New Yorker
To the Editor:
In "The Risk Pool" (August 28), Malcolm Gladwell repeats the new mantra of those who advocate nationalized health insurance: having to pay for workers' health insurance puts American firms at an international competitive disadvantage.
A fundamental flaw with the conclusion that government-supplied universal health insurance will make American firms more competitive is the fact that all that government supplies is paid for with resources taken from taxpayers. Therefore, much of the cost of such health insurance will still burden American business - directly in the form of higher tax bills and indirectly as higher taxes reduce the profitability of private investment and dampen economic growth. And because of the huge free-rider problems that fully nationalized health-care coverage will create, along with the red tape that will grow like kudzu from the Sisyphean attempts to solve these problems, the full burden on the economy of government-supplied universal health insurance will be colossal.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Editor, The New Yorker
To the Editor:
In "The Risk Pool" (August 28), Malcolm Gladwell repeats the new mantra of those who advocate nationalized health insurance: having to pay for workers' health insurance puts American firms at an international competitive disadvantage.
A fundamental flaw with the conclusion that government-supplied universal health insurance will make American firms more competitive is the fact that all that government supplies is paid for with resources taken from taxpayers. Therefore, much of the cost of such health insurance will still burden American business - directly in the form of higher tax bills and indirectly as higher taxes reduce the profitability of private investment and dampen economic growth. And because of the huge free-rider problems that fully nationalized health-care coverage will create, along with the red tape that will grow like kudzu from the Sisyphean attempts to solve these problems, the full burden on the economy of government-supplied universal health insurance will be colossal.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Sunday May 13, 2007 at 12:12pm