How to cure the U.S. healthcare system
The challenge of reforming healthcare in the United States and elsewhere is how to reduce waste without stifling innovation. But the development of new drugs and new medical procedures necessarily involves failure and needs the resources to allow for that. In other words, innovation is necessarily "wasteful." Making the trade-off between innovation and waste is tough. It is not clear that the heavy-handed bureaucracies created under Obama's healthcare law are best-equipped to get it right.
At the same time, the U.S. can cut waste without hurting innovation. For example, it could eliminate the perverse tax treatment given to health insurance and increase per-service fees. It is a shame that politicians of both parties have taken such options off the table. Read the full story
