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How to Afford Health Care

That is the inquiry at the heart of crisis of abundance

rethinking how we pay for health care a new book published by the Cato Institute

The author Cato adjunct scholar Arnold Kling,

joins us today for a phone interview

to discuss his book and the ideas that

may help get health care spending back on track. Arnold, could you tell me why you wrote this book?

I wrote it primarily to influence people's beliefs about health care because I think that

ultimately what people believe about the health care system, what's possible,

what's working and what's not working will affect the types of institutions and reforms that we can

adopt.

So according to you, what striving increases in health care spending today?

If you look at the supply side, the main change over the past 30 years has been a huge increase in both specialist care and in the use of high technology

in medicine.

I call that premium medicine.

But if you look at most industries, if there's an increase in supply that usually drives down costs and

health care is unusual in that the spending has been going way up in the face

of growing supply.

So that also means that there must be something happening on the demand side.

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