Do We Really Spend More and Get Less?

Sent to you via Google Reader

Do We Really Spend More and Get Less?

The conventional wisdom in health policy is that the United States spends far more than any other country and enjoys mediocre health outcomes. This judgment is repeated so often and so forcefully that you will almost never see it questioned. And yet it may not be true.

Indeed, the reverse may be true. We may be spending less and getting more.

The case for the critics was bolstered last week by a new OECD report that concluded:

The United States spends two-and-a-half times more than the OECD average health expenditure per person … It even spends twice as much as France, for example, a country which is generally accepted as having very good health services. At 17.4% of GDP in 2009, U.S. health spending is half as much again as any other country, and nearly twice the average.

Similar claims were made recently in The New York Times by former White House health advisor, Zeke Emanuel, who added that we are not getting better health care as a result. The same charge was aired at the Health Affairs blog the other day by Obama Social Security Advisory Board appointee Henry Aaron and health economist Paul Ginsburg. It is standard fare at Ezra Klein’s blog, at The Incidental Economist and at the Commonwealth Fund. It is also unquestioned dogma for New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman.

What are all these people missing? On the spending side, they are overlooking one of the most basic concepts in all of economics.

You can’t always get what you want.

When you and I buy something, the cost to us is the price we pay for it. But that is not necessarily true for society as a whole. The social cost of something may be a whole lot more or a whole lot less than what people actually spend on it; and that is especially true in health care.

In the United States a…

Daniel J. SmithSent via mobile phone
Assistant Professor of Economics
Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy
137 Bibb Graves Hall
Troy University
Phone: 334-808-6485
Email: smith.dan.j
Website: http://www.danieljosephsmith.com

Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan

Sent to you via Google Reader

Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan

from the Future of Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily (posted online today)

Dying to Corrupt Afghanistan

by James Bovard

American soldiers are dying so that Afghan politicians can continue looting U.S. tax dollars. Foreign aid has long been notorious for creating kleptocracies — governments of thieves. The $50+ billion foreign aid that the United States has dumped on Afghanistan over the past decade is a textbook case of how foreign handouts drag a nation down.

Corruption has been a huge issue ever since the United States installed a puppet government in Afghanistan. Following is a partial timeline of the major developments:

In January 2002, shortly after the United States announced that Afghan exile Hamid Karzai would be the new Afghan ruler, Karzai promised to prevent any corruption with foreign aid. He assured donors that he would take “personal responsibility” to protect their contributions from abuse.

By September 2003, Karzai was vigorously backtracking on his promise to end corruption. In a New York speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, he declared, “There are too many things that we cannot do something immediately about, and corruption is one of those things. The people are complaining very much. They are angry because of it. It’s something that worries me too very much.”

In December 2003, Karzai proudly announced the creation of an “independent graft-busting agency.” The presidential decree creating the agency promised that it would “monitor governmental organizations in order to prevent bribery and corruption in the country.” Reporting on the decree helped Karzai’s image in Washington, but no other impact from the change was perceivable.

In June 2004, Karzai visited Washington in part to “fight back against charges of corruption that have come up against” him, CNN reported.

In December 2004, Newsweek interviewed Karzai and headlined his promise to deliver an “honest, accountable, and austere government.”

In 2005, as the conflict in Iraq heated up, attention shifted away from Afghanistan. However, between 2005 and 2009, Afghanistan’s “corruption rating” went from merely bad to worst in the world (except for Somalia, which doesn’t have a government), according to Transparency International, a highly respected nonprofit.

By November 2007, even Karzai had become outraged by the pervasive looting. He declared at an Afghan conference on rural development,

All politicians in this system have acquired everything — money, lots of money. God knows, it is beyond the limit. The banks of the world are full of the money of our statesmen. The luxurious houses [built in Afghanistan in the past five years] belong to members of the government and parliament, not only in Kabul, but here and …

Daniel J. SmithSent via mobile phone
Assistant Professor of Economics
Manuel H. Johnson Center for Political Economy
137 Bibb Graves Hall
Troy University
Phone: 334-808-6485
Email: smith.dan.j
Website: http://www.danieljosephsmith.com

“The 99%” of Us Get Fined and Go to Jail for Insider Trading, But the Exempt “Political 1%” Can Get Rich

Sent to you via Google Reader

“The 99%” of Us Get Fined and Go to Jail for Insider Trading, But the Exempt “Political 1%” Can Get Rich

Congressional Inside Traders Are Above the Law

(CBS News)