A recent roundtable discussion on MS Now featured the Ford School's Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson for their perspective on the Trump administration's proposed healthcare plan. The two economics professors united to express their concern about the outlook for health insurance markets.
Wolfers began the discussion, remarking, "The president's plan is just unbelievable." He explains that the plan, from his view, is hardly a plan at all. Wolfers describes the President's proposed policy in saying, "Let's not regulate it at all, but I'll send you a check. That's it. Not a single recognition of any subtlety, any problem anywhere. The idea that what I'm going to do is like just let it rip." He nods that the President's current plan will add fuel to the fire that is the existing complications in health insurance markets.
"Health insurance is one of the most complicated set of markets in the world," Wolfers said.
Analyzing the American healthcare system, Stevenson argues that the current setup is about putting people in risk pools. She describes the healthcare system as one that benefits the rich and healthy and hurts the poor and sickly. Stevenson highlighted that employed individuals are those with the most access to health insurance, who are ironically already beneficiaries of insurance through employment. "That's what they're really relying on is like getting rid of the risk pools and letting the people who are very healthy, very lucky, and very rich to be able to buy cheaper health insurance. You know, they can already do that through their employers."
Stevenson declared that the fundamental problem with American healthcare is deciding "who we're going to put into a risk pool."
