The Washington Post, which is widely known as the paper that printed a column in mid-September saying the economy was just fine, has a column today telling readers that there is nothing we can do about health care costs. Remarkably, this lengthy column never once notes the fact that the United States pays more than twice as much per person for health care than the average of the other wealthy countries, all of whom enjoy longer life expectancies. This is a hard to overlook piece of evidence suggesting that the United States could do a great deal to lower its health care costs. Among other things, we have a hugely wasteful insurance system (noted in the column), pay close to twice as much for prescription drugs as people in other wealthy countries, and pay our medical specialists close to twice as much as they earn in other wealthy countries. Overpaying for drug and doctors not only directly wastes money by causing us to pay more for the same services. The huge rents created by these over-payments leads drug companies and specialists to find ways to promote excessive use of their products and services. The rest is really bad an really expensive medicine. Unfortunately, the villains in this story have enormous political power (because of their huge rents), which makes it very difficult to change the system, but that is not an excuse for the Post not to point out the underlying factors that drive up health care costs. If we cannot change the U.S. health care system, one alternative is to allow people to buy into the health care system of other countries. However, the Post is far too protectionist to even allow the possibility of freer trade in health care to be discussed in its pages.
--Dean Baker
