Is Universal Coverage Comparatively Effective? | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

Is Universal Coverage Comparatively Effective? | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "a recent New England Journal of Medicine article concluded, 'Although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.'
Likewise, economists Helen Levy of the University of Michigan and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago have thrown cold water on the conventional wisdom that expanding health insurance is a good investment.

In 2004, Levy and Meltzer reviewed the literature for the Urban Institute and concluded: "There is no evidence at this time that money aimed at improving health would be better spent on expanding insurance coverage than on other possibilities," such as programs that fund inner-city clinics, screen for discrete diseases such as hypertension, or promote better nutrition.

Writing in the Annual Review of Public Health in 2008, Levy and Meltzer reaffirmed that conclusion: 'The central question of how health insurance affects health, for whom it matters, and how much, remains largely unanswered at the level of detail needed to inform policy decisions.'"

"In a 2008 article for the Journal of Public Economics, Amy Finkelstein of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Robin McKnight of Wellesley College reported that even though Medicare achieved universal coverage for the elderly, it had no impact on elderly mortality rates in its first 10 years. Medicare may (or may not) have improved enrollees' health in other ways. Yet Finkelstein's and McKnight's results leave open the question of whether those and any additional benefits were worth Medicare's substantial cost."

"In the 1970s, at a time when many reformers were demanding to make health care "free" for all, Congress funded a massive social experiment to test the idea. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment startled reformers by showing that "free" care cost far more than mere catastrophic health insurance, yet offered little or no additional improvements in health."