The American Spectator

The Public Policy

(Page 3 of 4)

New York Times plus an article in both the New York Times Magazine and the New York Review of Books using these measures to bash our health care system. It is difficult to believe that, in all that time, he has never received an email telling him that such measures tell us little about a health care system. Indeed, going back to one of his columns from 2005, it's pretty clear that he has received such an email: br>

Most Americans probably don't know that we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries. It would be wrong to jump to the conclusion that this poor performance is entirely the result of a defective health care system; social factors, notably America's high poverty rate, surely play a role. Still, it seems puzzling that we spend so much, with so little return.

br> Krugman is clearly weasel-wording his way to an admission that life expectancy and infant mortality are poor measures of a health care system. So, Krugman knows that these measures are lousy, but he continues to use them. I can't imagine why. p>Finally, Krugman promises that government-run health care will be cheaper than the present system: br> /p>

If it were up to me, we'd have a Medicare-like system for everyone, paid for by a dedicated tax that for most people would be less than they or their employers currently pay in insurance premiums.

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Taxes, Health Care, Business, Medicaid, Books, NATO, Medicare