Fogel on Universal Healthcare
82 year old Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago economist Robert Fogel spoke recently at the annual Lindau meeting for Nobel Laureates. Fogel won the Nobel prize along with Douglass North in 1993 for the application of statistical methods to economic history, often with controversial results. At the Lindau meeting he said that the rising spending on healthcare in developing nations reflects the rising income of consumers along with a strong appetite for heathcare. He argued that “As people get richer they want to spend a larger share of their income on health.”
This comment drew an almost unanimous expression of sarcastic derision from readers of the Wall Street Journal, most of whom, evidently failed to understand that independently of the current American healthcare system, rising wealth, whether individual or national, correlates with greater healthcare spending. Fogel also said that governments should not interfere to decrease demand for healthcare in an effort to lower costs but should move to some form of universal healthcare for essential services with extra user costs for additional services such as shorter wating times, private hospital rooms, and expensive elective surgeries. Now, am I daft or can these comments be constructively applied to the USA?
