Economists find that most of the Feds incremental subsidies for seniors to buy private health coverage ended up in the insurers pockets. Only 20% bought more care.
This is a classic example of the third party problem. Consumers get a benefit that they don't pay for so they tend to over consume which in insurance terms shows up as excess coverage that is under used.
And the insurer rent seekers like all the other entrepreneurial cronies pursuing "Acela" (regulatory arbitrage) strategies prefer to get payment from the Feds because those gosh darn consumers are absolute heck when they're spending their own money. HHS weenies? Not so much.
Believe it or not millions of individual consumers are much better at ferreting out maximum value than government time servers.
If we'd only let them. Details here.
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