Comments on: Professor: Americans are Unkind

By: Jeanja

Jeanja — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 19:38:40 +0000

In my reading (based on direct quotes from the post), Dr. Reinhardt would agree with your point that “relative levels of kindness have nothing to do with why Americans favor or oppose various reform proposals.” Instead, he argues it's the higher price of health care in America that drives why Americans favor or oppose certain reforms. (You argue it's driven by Americans' distrust of gov't.) But we don't really know what he would say. (I emailed him asking him to post here, but I'm not holding my breath.)

By: Jeanja

Jeanja — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:38:40 +0000

By: Evan Falchuk

Evan Falchuk — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:43:13 +0000

Hi Jeanja,

I think Dr. Reinhardt's post speaks for itself, which is why I quoted from it directly to describe what it says.

My point is this: relative levels of kindness have nothing to do with why Americans favor or oppose various reform proposals.

Thanks for the comment,

Evan

By: Jeanja

Jeanja — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:28:58 +0000

This blog post is a poor summary of the original article. The article does not say Americans are unkind-- on the contrary, it explicitly assumes Americans are as kind as people of other nationalities. The point is that since kindly giving an American a free coronary bypass is far more expensive than giving a free one to a Japanese, then basic economy theory (the intersecting supply and demand curves) predict fewer American will receive the free bypass. Giving fewer free bypasses may make Americans *seem* less kind when in fact they aren't.

Below are some illustrative quotes from the article to support my version of the summary:

"for all we know, the American people are just as kind and charitable in health care as are people in Taiwan, Japan, Europe and Canada..."

"Americans may appear less charitable than these other nationals, we hypothesized, because the price of being kind is so extraordinarily high in American health care."

"To illustrate, depending on the region and the providers within a region, bestowing a coronary bypass graft on a poor fellow American can be the equivalent of giving him or her a fully loaded Mercedes Benz E-350. In most other countries, we would be talking about a secondhand compact car."

By: Gregg Masters

Gregg Masters — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:25:14 +0000

Well it is certainly worth noting that this new found fiscal accountability and forward integrity of cost projection demands of CBO and other prognosticators is getting such a workout on health matters. Yet, when it comes to wartime supplementals, corporate welfare and the continued feeding of the military/industrial/congressional complex, we seem much more willing to cut 'the government' some slack.

Very curious indeed!

By: MKirschMD

MKirschMD — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:38:30 +0000

I don’t think we’re unkind about health care reform, but we are not keen on their kind of health care reform. I am skeptical of the legislation that is currently brewing in Congress. They are quite generous with grandiose promises, but I fear they will be stingy on the delivery. The costs will be higher than they predict, as is always the case in Washington, D.C.. We’ll see what the Congressional Budget Office says this week about the Senate’s latest iteration of HCR. I don’t see effective health care cost control emerging from any of the bills. Evan, if I missed it, ‘kindly’ point it out to me. www.MDWhistleblower.blogspot.com