Kling on health care

Arnold Kling is another voice calling for a diminished role for health insurance:

To move in the direction of personal responsibility, we have to make more of our health-care system look like the one finger — as was the case as recently as 1960, when the share of medical expenses paid for by individuals out of pocket was 50 percent. This is a radical idea for reform, and neither political party is talking about it.

...Our health-care system is wasteful. We spend far too much money with relatively little to show for it. That would be of little concern if individuals were wasting their own money. However, because close to 90 percent of personal health-care spending is paid for by third parties, we are wasting each other’s money.

Hopefully this message will start to resonate among policymakers.