I was reading a live q&a with Jonathan gruber, described as the Romneycare/ obamacare architect and a MIT economist, when I came across this question and answer:
Q: what incentives do small or large businesses have to continue to provide health insurance?
Jonathan gruber A: small business have mixed incentives - that's why a minority of them will drop insurance. But medium & large businesses have always offered insurance as incentives have varied a lot over time - there's no reason to stop doing so now.
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Im upset that he would just brush that question aside as if he hadn't thought about that question before ( which I guess is possible) or that it is a dumb question. But seriously what incentive is there at all? In fact I think there is 100% incentive for every single business to drop health insurance. I expect every employee to prefer to have the x amount of dollars they were receiving in healthcare to be given to them in cash as a salary incentive. Then they use that money to turn around and buy there own insurance that fits their own family's need better (since now it is affordable on an individual scale). Am I wrong for thinking that? And what kind of economic outcome will that create?
Subject 2: gruber said that he foresees only a 1-2% increase in health insurance costs over the next decade because of obamacare. How is that even close to possible when the demand for doctors is going to go up 50.7 million ppl? Also these 50 million ppl probably have been waiting for a long time to see a doctor since they havent been able to afford one. So it stands to reason that these 50 million will have a much higher demand than everyone else who is already insured (on average). Also how are these docs supposed to make room for the increase in demand of services? Ive never really heard of too many unemployed medical docs. Nurses can't pick up the slack there is already a shortage of them. I don't see how pricing won't go through the roof because of demand and then patient care will suffer tremendously because nurses and docs will be booked solid all day everyday.
Subject 3: gruber made predictions that primary care doc costs will rise and the specialist costs will fall. Isn't that the worst possible thing to happen? (also he mentioned lots of price controlling and don't want to open that bag of worms). Specialist doctors, from my understanding, are the best docs out there. They busted their ass off the most to make great grades then they carried that education into the work force and they are now able to charge an arm and a leg to give their specialized opinion and work. While physicians typically didn't do as well. So the incentive to be a specialist won't be as high since they could make close to that as a primary doc. I'd suggest too that would be docs choose a whole different profession all together if there isn't a chance to be a huge multimillionaire. They would probably just get into politics to make some real money. Is this wrong thinking?
Lastly! Are there any predictions on just how much healthcare prices could rise? Because he also said that no American will pay more than 9.5% therefore the government will have to subsidize every dollar that goes over that.
grant.w.underwood:Lastly! Are there any predictions on just how much healthcare prices could rise? Because he also said that no American will pay more than 9.5% therefore the government will have to subsidize every dollar that goes over that.
If anything, Gruber's "estimates" are gropings in the dark. Economics is incapable of making quantitative estimates on qualitative events. For instance, anyone can say that an increase in the supply of a good will reduce prices for that good, ceteris paribus. The reason why such predictions can't be made with accuracy, even though this hasn't stopped people like Gruber from gazing into his crystal ball, is that economic prices are not points in a function that is continuous to an infinitely small point for all values of x with certain inherent constants in place; rather, prices are historic facts that are the evidence of random and dynamic exchanges occurring between however many individuals in the past. We can't plug in a price for good A at time=t and find what A will cost at time t+k; that's scientism.
Going over the rest of your post, and assuming this is the gist of what the man has said, it seems that most of his statements are based on improper assumptions (interpersonal comparisons of demand before such demand has been manifested through purchases) and value judgments ("no American will pay more than 9.5% [proof? And 9.5% of what?]. Therefore, government should subsidize that [value judgment made; while these are not the exact words Gruber used, this is an assumed ethical norm, nonetheless]") It's easy to believe that "economists" of Gruber's caliber constructed Obamacare.
If I had a cake and ate it, it can be concluded that I do not have it anymore. HHH
Gruber is the jagooff that wrote my "Public Health and Public Policy" textbook. Here is my review on Amazon. He's a charlatan of an economist.
He is one of "those" that uses economics as a political weapon because of the widespread ignorance of the subject.
sorry, 9.5% of income.
the questions were coming from random ppl. nothing deep at all, just 2-3 sentence replies.
REAL tough questions like: why didnt we put this into law immediately?...so people wouldnt be fighting it so much.
the whole text can be found here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/26/live-chat-on-healthcare-reform-with-economist-jonathan-gruber.html if you are inclined to read it only like 30 questions.
you are two for two in answering my posts and i thank you for taking time to help teach.
off the subject, do you know of any undergraduate and/or graduate university that embraces the austian school of thought? Or at least any great austrian professors out there still teaching today? i just got out of the Marine Corps and im going to be a full-time student in the coming months and i would like to goto a school where i can find a professor to help mentor me.
Are you Pizza Party or Em_?
Here's a list of schools that incorporate Austrian economics into their economic curricula along with what degrees are offered in each case: http://mises.org/classroom/gradschool.pdf
not sure what that means haha.
Thanks for the school list.
That question was directed to Aristophanes.
It's obvious what the agenda is. First, make the fraudulently named "health insurance" compulsory. Second, nationalize the insurance firms either explicitly or by setting the rules of policies so that the outcome is essentially the entire working population paying in the same amount for every type of service- i.e., elimination of risk pools into one uniform pool with automatic acceptance and one universal fee- i.e., the Canadian system with a nominally private veneer.
Em_