Innovation: the Most Important Kind of Health Care Reform

In the Orange County Register, I explain how ObamaCare would stifle innovations in health insurance and medical delivery:

Economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad found that, when it comes to basic medical sciences, diagnostics (e.g., MRIs and CT scanners), and therapeutics (e.g., ACE inhibitors and statins), the United States often produces more medical innovations than all other nations.


America’s health insurance markets are not following suit, despite the ready availability of innovations that can improve the delivery of care, insure the “young invincibles,” and provide secure coverage for the sick. Bringing those innovations to consumers requires tearing down regulatory barriers to competition — the very barriers that the Obama plan would stack higher.

Such innovations include comparative‐​effectiveness research, coordinated care, insurance policies that persuade the “young invincibles” to purchase coverage, and health insurance that comes with a total‐​satisfaction guarantee.