Is Universal Health Insurance Affordable?

Judging from the commentaries, this blogger gets the very distinct impression that campaigns for the US presidential elections next year and the Democratic Party's candidate will need to say a lot of really sensible things about the possibility of universal health care. A highly impressive article by David Leonhardt of the New York Times assesses the conventional wisdom and debates regarding universal health insurance and finds that it is informed by the wrong assumptions.

It is clear that the proposals by Sentors Obama and Edwards respectively highlight the fact that universal coverage, while popular, is not the solution because part of the problem is caused by medical professionals pushing expensive medical procedures whose benefits are far from proven. It is clear then that the Edwards proposal would cover everyone but the costs would be unmanageable and wasteful while the Obama proposal that is concerned with efficiency probably will not ensure the coverage of the last person in the US.

Adding these clear contradictions to the fact that health economists cited in the piece are certain that health costs are growing faster than real incomes, one concludes that no easy solutions are at hand. So as all these candidates consider their proposals, the unpalatable fact may be that absolute universal health coverage may not be affordable. David Leonhardt makes it clear that a purely ideological orientation will lose to dispassionate analysis. It is beginning to look as if absolutely universal health insurance is even too costly for the most productive economy in the world. The politics of it is easier than the the economics of it. I figure that at one point, the discussion will have to get to what can be made really universal.