Health Care Reform: What, Me Worry?

Megan McArdle opposes health care reform, with many concerns that I share:

[I]n the absence of a robust private US market, my assumption is that the government will focus on the apparent at the expense of the hard-to-measure. Innovation benefits future constituents who aren't voting now. Producing it is very expensive. On the other hand, cutting costs pleases voters this instant. This is, fundamentally, what cries to "use the government's negotiating power" with drug companies is about. Advocates of such a policy spend a lot of time arguing about whether pharmaceutical companies do, or do not, spend too much on marketing. This is besides the point. The government is not going to price to some unknowable socially optimal amount of pharma market power. It is going to price to what the voters want, which is to spend as little as possible right now.

I won't summarize it. It's a long post and it speaks for itself. I'm not as sanguine about reform, generally. I think that the 1/6 of Americans that are uninsured are a really big deal (and I'm sure Megan thinks so to). But I happen to think that the right answer is the one that insures that 1/6 as directly and inexpensively as possible, avoids moral hazard as much as possible, and doesn't create massive market distortions for the percentage of Americans that can actuall afford their own coverage. But that's probably not what we're going to get.