Morning Must-Read:Uwe Reinhardt on John Goodman and Company: The Real Health Care ‘War’

Uwe Reinhardt: The Real Health Care ‘War’ on the Young:

A common theme among critics of Obamacare has been that it basically is a war on… young… men… Chris Conover… John Goodman… Avik Roy…. Now, one certainly can have misgivings over community rating on actuarial grounds…. But the authors cited above do not base their case on purely technical, economic grounds. Language such as ‘the greatest generational theft in world history’ or ‘a war on the bros’ is meant to generate moral outrage. A case in point is the gender neutrality…. Before the Affordable Care Act, premiums for women in the younger age groups in the individual and small-group market were as much as 70 percent higher than those of men of similar age because women bear children…. Imposing gender-neutral community rating on such a market inevitably leads to some economic transfer from men to women…. Among many Americans and most Europeans and Asians–men included–this mandated gender neutrality is noncontroversial. Perhaps it is thought of as a small token of gratitude for the extraordinary contribution to humanity women make in this regard. Besides, there is growing scientific evidence that the physical and intellectual development of humans into adulthood is strongly influenced by their experience and nutrition in utero and during early childhood. Thus, a nation does not even have to be particularly humane, but merely smart, to grant women of child-bearing age easy access to the best maternal and child care attainable, including good nutrition. It is a solid economic investment with high social returns over generations. Yet as I have noted previously, many other Americans seem to view children more in the nature of lovable human pets–that is, more in the nature of a private good than a precious social resource.”