Mankiw

Greg Mankiw presents the most careful, balanced, while remaining honest, view of health care I have yet seen.

1.  Health care is paid for somewhere...and the Obama plan increases effective marginal tax rates, which decreases GDP growth.
2.  This doesn't mean we shouldn't do it...just that we shouldn't pretend that pigs can fly.  The question is are we willing to trade "universal coverage" for slower wealth growth.


As a left libertarian futurist...always thinking of the children, and the poor foreigners...I have a hard time imagining ANY trade I'd make against future growth rates.  Wealth for poor Africans/Indians, wealth to afford better environmental regulations, and the research budgets to find lifesaving drugs and treatments are going to be created by greater world GDP, which will be driven a lot by the Americans.  I'm not willing to trade the GDP for much of ANY specific proposal, be it universal health care or AGW prevention...because it's almost universally true that higher GDP growth allows more net spending on everything than almost any current spending.  See Texas/CA debate.

UPDATE:  I forgot that Patri linked to another, longer, also very well thought out piece.