Ambiance

Gathering the Facts on Healthcare – an Introduction

May 12, 2009 at 3:14 pm (By Maxwell James)

In recent months, much of my day-job has dealt with analyzing a fairly specific problem in the healthcare field. Doing this research has led me to become more interested in the far more politicized debate about healthcare reform in this country – particularly those aspects having to do with cost management and the national budget deficit.

As an agnostic on the topic of healthcare reform, it occurred to me that I could perform a useful service by simply trying to gather relevant facts about this debate. I doubt any facts are going to make me a believer, one way or another, at this point; I’ve seen too much already to think that there’s a simple or even a complex solution to this very intractable problem.

Nonetheless, over the coming weeks I’ll be posting bits and pieces of what I see, in what should mostly be bite-sized amounts. For starters, I’d like to recommend recent blog posts by two people who have demonstrated a strong commitment to facts over ideology when it comes to this debate:

Dave Schuler on the recent trade organization proposal to decrease price increases.
Tyler Cowen on direct payments for autism treatments.

~ Maxwell