Greg Mankiw responds to questions about his views on health care following his piece on the misuse of statistics in the health care debate:
Q: There has been a lot of blogosphere commentary on your piece. Are you going to respond to it?
A: No. Life is too short. But I will note that I am a bit surprised at some of the strong reactions from the left. California Medicine Man is correct when he writes,
Every element of Mankiw’s analysis has been common knowledge in the healthcare economics field for several years and strictly speaking, none of this is really news.
Read the whole thing, but I am not surprised at the reaction. He then provides us with something we adore, a conjecture!
Q: Do you think the pundits of the left are similarly confused?
A: Some are, but others have an altogether different motive. Observing dissatisfaction with the U.S. healthcare system, they are using reform as a Trojan Horse to push for more redistribution of income. Almost all sweeping health reform proposals involve higher taxes on the rich to provide benefits for those farther down the economic ladder. The redistribution, rather than health reform, is sometimes the main objective.
To judge whether my conjecture is correct, ask your favorite pundit of the left the following: What health reform would you favor if the reform were required to be distribution-neutral? That is, you can change the rules of the health system but you cannot change the distribution of economic resources between rich and poor. My guess is that your favorite pundit would either object to the question or would answer by retreating to more modest reforms. If so, this suggests that calls for sweeping reform are mainly motivated by the desire for increased redistribution.
On the most important question however he attempts to dodge the issue:
Q: Are you the devil incarnate?
A: I will get back to you on that.
He isn’t, but many think he used to work for him.
