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Epstein on healthcare

23 Aug 2007 04:15 pm

Instapundit and the Instawife interview the ever-brilliant Richard Epstein on health care.

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Comments (11)

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Posted by Charles Johnson | August 23, 2007 4:28 PM

I suspect that we have extended too much protection to pharmaceutical intellectual property, especially in regards to patent extensions, and it could be trimmed back to allow more price competition without having much impact on capital allocation to the industry, but it only is a suspicion.

Meanwhile, I'd vote for John Edwards if he woulda' tried to sue the FDA for killing people by delaying the entry of drugs into the marketplace.

Posted by Will Allen | August 23, 2007 4:38 PM

Hi Megan, I caught your piece on Washington Journal today. I've gotta say, you sure know how to spin. For three of the questions I heard from callers, you erroneously defined each of their question, only to answer them in the way that you wanted. Such trickery. I warn you: you will gain no substance of point of view if you try to fly so fancifully. You will not grow deeply intellectual until you genuinely hear the questions and then answer them honestly. Just some friendly advice. You are young with room to grow. Good luck. Note to managing editor.

Sincerely,

Gary R. Isaacs

Posted by Gary Isaacs | August 23, 2007 4:42 PM

From the highly unusual brevity (for you) of your link to "Instapundit", I take it you didn't actually listen to the interview, right?

Posted by Steve Kelso | August 23, 2007 4:45 PM

Gary R. Isaacs:

Here is what Ms McArdle had to say about the callous Bush response to Katrina:


“I’d like to ask you if you could briefly describe your thoughts in the governments role in the Katrina effort?”

McArdle:
Um, well, I think it’s obviously not gone well, but I also, to some extent, there’s two separate questions: how did FEMA do? F. The tendency was just to blame the Bush administration, which I don’t think is right. The way FEMA was set up, the problems were certainly enhanced by bureaucratic incompetence, but also the constraints on the way that FEMA acts, um, and the rules that were set up for other emergencies, just tended to make things worse, they bought all these trailers, for example, because

CSPAN: (interrupting)
But where does FEMA exist in a libertarian state?

McArdle:
Um, it doesn’t'! however, I think it should be noted there was an enormous outpouring of private charity, and the private charity was vastly more effective, while FEMA was struggling to get water into New Orleans, WALMART sent trucks and trucks of the stuff down, whereas FEMA, because of all these bureaucratic constraints, couldn’t get going. Um, um, in a libertarian world, without FEMA, you would have seen, the problem is, everything would be so different, you wouldn’t have had the Army Corps of Engineers building all the levys that then broke, New Orleans would have looked like a different city, so, at that point, you’re going so far back to first principles, given that FEMA existed, which I think I have to take, I think there was bureaucratic incompetence, but there were also structural problems with the way that the government hems in the discretion of emergency management bureaucracies and makes all these incredibly tight rules about what they’re supposed to do, if you have an emergency, I think you want as few rules as possible because god knows what the emergency is going to be.

Posted by Steve Kelso | August 23, 2007 4:48 PM

Mr. Isaacs sure drives home the fact that the ol' pompousometer redlines in these comment threads more frequently than it did at Ms. McArdle's old site.

Posted by Will Allen | August 23, 2007 5:20 PM

Yeah, life outside the cocoon isn't always smooth sailing.

A little band of pearl-clutching Church Ladies seems to have fallowed MMcA over here and is furiously trying to keep the rabble in line, though. Good luck!

Posted by Woody Bombay | August 23, 2007 6:04 PM

Comrade Kelso-

Here is what Ms McArdle had to say about the callous Bush response to Katrina:

I happen to agree with about 99% of what she said... perhaps you could possibly climb down off your "high horse", and explain exactly what she got wrong-- rather than just quoting her statement?

Or, would that violate your "Community-Based Reality"?

Posted by fletch | August 23, 2007 6:14 PM

I dunno about your world, Woody, but in mine the rabble doesn't read like a net-savvy Robert Byrd. You really need to get out more.

Posted by Will Allen | August 23, 2007 6:45 PM

Heh. Indeed.

Posted by M. Bouffant | August 24, 2007 1:45 AM