David Cameron is not the Worse Man to Lead Britain

     High praise right? It is from me as I don't like Cameron. However, I read something that makes me like him better. Noah Smith:

      "Has economics really become less about "free market priesthood"? Well, I think academic econ has. But as for pop econ, there still seems to be a lot of it around. For example, Steve Levitt, one of the most popular pop economists in the world, recently had this to say about health care:

In their latest book, Think Like a Freak, co-authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner tell a story about meeting David Cameron...They told him that the U.K.’s National Health Service -- free, unlimited, lifetime heath care -- was laudable but didn’t make practical sense.  

"We tried to make our point with a thought experiment," they write. "We suggested to Mr. Cameron that he consider a similar policy in a different arena. What if, for instance...everyone were allowed to go down to the car dealership whenever they wanted and pick out any new model, free of charge, and drive it home?" 

Rather than seeing the humor and realizing that health care is just like any other part of the economy, Cameron abruptly ended the meeting... 

So what do Dubner and Levitt make of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, which has been described as a radical rethinking of America's health care system?  

"I do not think it's a good approach at all," says Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. "Fundamentally with health care, until people have to pay for what they're buying it's not going to work. Purchasing health care is almost exactly like purchasing any other good in the economy. If we're going to pretend there's a market for it, let's just make a real market for it."

     "This is exactly what I call "free market priesthood". Does Levitt have a model that shows that things like adverse selection, moral hazard, principal-agent problems, etc. are unimportant in health care? Does he have empirical evidence that people behave as rationally when their health and life are on the line as when buying a car? Does he even have evidence that the British health system, specifically, underperforms?"

     http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/market-priesthood.html

       Even Kenneth Arrow-the father of the idea-or proof of the idea, such as it is-that market prices are efficient didn't believe they work in healthcare. If Cameron really did reject this out of hand then so much the better for him. I like him considerably more than before I read this little blurb. Certain markets clearly are not Walraisan-one is healthcare-another is the money market.

      As we saw in a recent post, I'm actually a British Citizen-I was born there, though I'm an American citizen as well, Britian lets you have dual citizenship.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2014/05/a-day-in-immigration-office-in-patchogue.html

       I'm relived to know that the Mother Country is not being run by a man who thinks that the answer to healthcare problems is to totally nationalize it. David Cameron, you may not be the best man for the job but you are not the worst either!