Monday, April 13, 2009

The Burden of Choice   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Reader C.E. sends a note arguing that individual consumers should not be asked to choose what treatments they want to get covered years in advance. I'd post the whole email, but Ezra Klein already did. A few responses. 1) It is hard to believe that the market would evolve in a way that consumers were asked procedure-by-procedure, condition-by-condition what they wanted covered. There would probably be various standard packages offered by insurers, resources such as Consumer Reports and word-of-mouth, etc. 2) Buying insurance policies in other areas routinely requires people implicitly to forecast the future in ways that they lack the expertise to do really well. E.g., home owners' insurance, car insurance. 3) People will not make perfect decisions! But is there any reason to expect legislators to make better ones?

04/13 05:26 PMShare