Michael F. Cannon discusses health care reform in a NMA forum

Now this is over a year and a half old, but extremely poignant given what just happen in health care. Michael Cannon, an economist from George Mason University, bets Karen Davenport, a master of public administration that he can convince her of these two claims regarding universal health insurance coverage:

1. Supporting an individual mandate is an act of personal irresponsibility
2. Supporting universal coverage means you are willing to let people die unnecessarily

It is obvious he won, but I feel it is a trick question. Especially on the first point where Mr. Cannon states that it is irresponsible to give up any bit of freedom. So by agreeing that the government should force people have health insurance is personally irresponsible because it denies people the freedom to choose whether or not to have health insurance. I agree with Mr. Cannon on the principle, but I feel those who support the individual mandate believe that the benefit of having everyone possess some sort of insurance is more valuable than the restraint on freedom it imposes. I find this to be a sort of principled argument that no one really considers when debating policy, but it makes for an interesting economic thought game when one is bored.

The second point is a little bit different than I expected. I did not expect Mr. Cannon to use the erroneous "death panel" argument that the Republican party used unsuccessfully, but he did not even touch upon the concept of price at all. Instead he argued that academics have proven that the concept of health insurance may not be the best alternative to staying healthy, and that by expanding this concept to everyone is essentially expanding a theory that has not be tested against other possible maybe even better solutions. The other solutions possibly might save more lives.

Regardless of what he argues, he is right and it goes back to the basic concept of economics: there are infinite wants and finite resources. This is especially true when it comes to the concept of information. Everybody wants to know everything, but there are limits. Without perfect information there are going to be unnecessary deaths, but obtaining anything close to perfect information is more expensive than we can imagine, and as I would argue impossible.

Both the claims Mr. Cannon makes are true, and Ms. Davenport owes him $40.

What do you think?

HT: Bryan Caplan for posting it on his blog