Minor Thoughts from me to you

Will Wilkinson presents his Health Care Fantasia that includes the following prescriptions for cheaper health care: decartelization of doctors, abolishing the FDA, offering real insurance markets, creating a health care ideas futures market, creating electronic diagnostic services, allowing people to have big health care savings accounts, and forcing people to have a catastrophic insurance plan. Along with those ideas, he takes a stab at solving the problem of uninsured citizens. I support all of his ideas. Rather than making me repeat what's good, just go read it for yourself.

Last year, Arnold Kling presented his idea for a Medical Guidelines Commission that would:

consist of, say, seven members drawn from the disciplines of medical research, medical practice, statistics and actuarial science, and economics. It would have a staff with similar expertise to evaluate research and to oversee grants to stimulate research where none is available.

The Commission would have two main functions:

• Collect and summarize research about the effectiveness of various medical practices. For those of us willing to work with doctors to make our own decisions, this information would be sufficient.

• Issue guidelines that could be taken as recommendations for best practices. These guidelines would serve those people who would be intimidated by statistical research and prefer to be told what to do. The guidelines might also serve as industry-wide benchmarks.

Guidelines would not be carved in stone. Patients and doctors would be free to choose treatments that differ from the guidelines. Moreover, the guidelines themselves would change over time, because medicine is a constantly-evolving art.

The trick to making health care cheaper is to make health care more plentiful. The more patients can do for themselves, the cheaper health care will become (because the demand for doctor provided health care will be lower). The easier it is for people to become doctors, the cheaper health care will become (because the supply of doctors will be higher).

I'd like to draw attention to something that Will mentioned in his post: does setting a broken arm really require a full-fledged MD? Setting a broken arm has nothing to do with the liver, heart, lungs, kidney's, or any of the other subjects that MD's study. Why not open up the market for health care and allow people to specialize in specific areas of expertise (splinting broken bones) without requiring them to obtain a full medical degree?

(Hat tip to Arnold Kling)