Rethinking Health Insurance

Do the health plans most Americans receive through their employers count as actual health insurance? To what extent do the rising costs of health care reflect the structure and incentives of health plans? What would real health insurance be like? What are the advantages and limitations of private insurance in financing health care? What sort of system should we aim at the help ensure quality care while keeping health services broadly available and affordable to Americans?

In this month’s lead essay, economist Arnold Kling, author of Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care argues that the American health system does not insure citizens against the risk of ill health so much as “insulate” them from the true cost of medical procedures, encouraging often needless procedures, and putting upward pressure on the costs of care. Replying in this issue to Kling with be Matthew Holt, health care consultant and author of the Health Care Blog; Clark C. Havighurst, William Neal Reynolds Professor Emeritus of Law at Duke University and expert in health law and policy; and Jonathan Cohn, senior editor of the New Republic, and author of a forthcoming book on the American system of financing health care.

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