We've Got You Covered
Rebooting American Health Care
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From a MacArthur Genius MIT economist and pre-eminent Stanford economist comes a lively and provocative proposal for American health insurance reform
Few of us need convincing that the American health insurance system needs reform. But many of the existing proposals focus on expanding one relatively successful piece of the system or building in piecemeal additions. These proposals miss the point.
As the Stanford health economist Liran Einav and the MIT economist and MacArthur Genius Amy Finkelstein argue, our health care system was never deliberately designed, but rather pieced together to deal with issues as they became politically relevant. The result is a sprawling yet arbitrary and inadequate mess. It has left 30 million Americans without formal insurance. Many of the rest live in constant danger of losing their coverage if they lose their job, give birth, get older, get healthier, get richer, or move.
It's time to tear it all down and rebuild, sensibly and deliberately. Marshaling original research, striking insights from American history, and comparative analysis of what works and what doesn’t from systems around the world, Einav and Finkelstein argue for automatic, basic, and free universal coverage for everyone, along with the option to buy additional, supplemental coverage. Their wholly original argument and comprehensive blueprint for an American universal health insurance system will surprise and provoke.
We’ve Got You Covered is an erudite yet lively and accessible prescription we cannot afford to ignore.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The only reason the U.S. healthcare system is not completely broken is because there's no solid thing to break, argue economists Einav and Finkelstein (coauthors, Risky Business) in this impassioned call for ground-up reform. According to the authors, critics of the current system of medical coverage tend to overfocus on the 30 million uninsured Americans, when in fact 90% of the total population is underinsured, at risk of losing coverage, or saddled with significant debt. Einav and Finkelstein contend that the government ought to take inspiration from the success of systems like those in Singapore and the U.K. by drawing a distinction between "health" and "care" and developing an approach more comparable to air travel: those who can afford to fly first class may be more comfortable, but everyone on board gets from point A to point B. Countering arguments that the integrity of such a system, even when guaranteed by law, would be threatened by variations among factors like hospital wait times, the authors draw on philosopher John Rawls's equality principle, which they claim suggests that guaranteed adequacy is better than failed equality. Thanks to the sensible pragmatism of the authors' approach, healthcare reform activists will find this a useful tool.
