Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Arrow on health care

I really liked this passage :-)

And if one explanation is the professional standards, why do you think the professional standards have changed?

Sometimes I think it's because of the Chicago School. I think there has been a general drift around the country towards the idea that greed is good. Look at Wall Street. All of these industries involve a professional element in which information is flowing. You're supposed to be constrained to be honest about it. I don't really know why. But there is now more of an emphasis on popularization, which does improve efficiency but can also lead to an erosion of professional standards. There was this idea that professional standards were a mask for monopoly power--a Chicago theory, which I believe came from George Stigler. I don't know if they were that influential, but they seemed to be saying a lot of things that people were taking up in practice. I'm not totally sure why these professional standards changed, but it's more than medical reasons.


http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/conor_clarke/2009/07/an_interview_with_kenneth_arrow_part_two.php

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