Theory and Practice

Andrew Sullivan notes that Republicans insist on selling the idea that private health care would be cheaper than government care. This argument has one slight problem:

The trouble with this argument is that while it is indeed doctrinally perfect, and therefore appealing to today's brain-dead GOP base, it is empirically wrong. The private healthcare sector is far more expensive than the public and enormously inefficient - especially compared with more socialized systems abroad.

Neither Andrew nor the economics profession in general seems ready to make the leap to concluding that doctrines which give wrong answers might be, er, wrong.

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