Does more medical care result in more health?
GMU econoomist Robin Hanson argues that the answer is "No."
In the June 12, 2023 episode of the External Medicine Podcast, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Hanson about the relationship between healthcare spending and health outcomes.
Among other things, they discuss three, large scale, randomized controlled trials:
* RAND health insurance experiment
* Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
* Karnataka Hospital Insurance Experiment
All three trials basically found that medical care has almost no effect on the health of the population as a whole. If medical care provides no net benefit, why do we spend so much on it? Hanson's position is that most healthcare spending is a signal to demonstrate to our friends and family how much we care about them, a thesis which he lays out in more detail in his book, The Elephant In the Brain.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1zo47UJnJF2XrEP89zAAq0
Hanson also offers up some reforms that these trial results imply in the 2007 Cato Unbound essay "Cut Medicine in Half"
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-half/
#archer_medicine
#archer_podcasts
GMU econoomist Robin Hanson argues that the answer is "No."
In the June 12, 2023 episode of the External Medicine Podcast, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Hanson about the relationship between healthcare spending and health outcomes.
Among other things, they discuss three, large scale, randomized controlled trials:
* RAND health insurance experiment
* Oregon Health Insurance Experiment
* Karnataka Hospital Insurance Experiment
All three trials basically found that medical care has almost no effect on the health of the population as a whole. If medical care provides no net benefit, why do we spend so much on it? Hanson's position is that most healthcare spending is a signal to demonstrate to our friends and family how much we care about them, a thesis which he lays out in more detail in his book, The Elephant In the Brain.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1zo47UJnJF2XrEP89zAAq0
Hanson also offers up some reforms that these trial results imply in the 2007 Cato Unbound essay "Cut Medicine in Half"
https://www.cato-unbound.org/2007/09/10/robin-hanson/cut-medicine-half/
#archer_medicine
#archer_podcasts