More health care or more beer? A curious paradox of making some economic tasks a res publica

Frans van Waarden

Chapter 8 in Public or Private Goods?, 2017, pp 132-149 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The chapter investigates the curious paradox that for most goods and services and their economic sectors the benefits we derive from them are stressed, for example in the press: utility, productivity, income, employment. But for health care services this is less the case. Here the emphasis in the press is more often on the costs involved rather than the benefits acquired. Poor doctors, nurses, and other care service providers! What is of more value than one’s own health? The chapter investigates various possible explanations for this strange paradox, such as absence of the benefit principle (pay in direct exchange for the service) in health care, or compulsory payment for health insurance, which make it look like a tax payment, which we also do not like (see the resistance in the United States against ’ Obamacare’). Would abolishment of the public involvement (as a res publica) be a solution to this ‘unfair’ attitude to doctors and nurses?

Keywords: Economics and Finance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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