Paul Gregory at Forbes On Gruber –
‘Professor Gruber must use “behavioral assumptions” to guesstimate, among thousands of other things, how many young people will ignore the mandate, how many employers will drop coverage, and how providers will react to new incentives and compensation schemes.
Do not worry, says the Times. Gruber’s behavioral assumptions are “based on past experience and economic theory.” But where is “past experience” when we entirely revamp our health-care system? Economic theory, at best, may give us the first-order directions of change, but it is helpless to account for the all-important higher-order effects and feedbacks. We economists hold the secret of how little we really know close to our vests.’
Claiming the mantle of science provides moral justification enough for some supporters of this huge central planning project, with everyone’s time and money.
A bigger concern may be how badly the law is written, and barely cobbled together, because after all, genuine health care reform wouldn’t hurt.
Related On This Site: From The New England Journal Of Medicine Via CATO: ‘The Constitutionality of the Individual Mandate’From If-Then Knots: Health Care Is Not A Right…But Then Neither Is Property?… From The New Yorker: Atul Gawande On Health Care-”The Cost Conundrum”…Sally Pipes At Forbes: ‘A Plan That Leads Health Care To Nowhere’…From AEI: ‘Study: ‘Obama Healthcare Reform Raising Costs, Forcing Workers Out Of Existing Plans’
Gruber’s main talent is lining his own pockets.
True enough, but few people work just for money.
Gruber also was likely aiming for respect, notoriety, recognition for the use of his talents, cleverness,to be seen in a group of peers etc.
But that leads to more money.
Ron,
Oh absolutely, but I’m trying to think of the things motivating Gruber, you know the totally human things that ideologues like him lose sight of in their master plans for the rest of us.
The problem is some want master plans. Obamacare is a big mess, and it will take years to straighten it out. BCBS in Texas raised its premiums 16.4%. Those who make too much to get a subsidy will find the penalty is about 15% of what insurance costs so only the sick will buy it, causing premiums to spiral up.
That illustrates it pretty well, and those young/healthy people or those too poor to afford insurance will be taxed/penalized into the system.
It’s a massive wealth transfer machine, badly designed, that will include and subsidize many poor on the backs of everyone else, and which will politicize many aspects of the wealth and distribution of health-care