John Goodman’s Commentaries

Here are four surprising facts: (1) the subject on which there is the most disinformation is “taxes”; (2) almost all the disinformation comes from the left; (3) it is spread to the general public by the mainstream media; and (4) it is almost never fact-checked. More.

In 2011, Tom Saving and John Goodman pointed out in Health Affairs that Medicare was setting 6 billion prices on any given day. Writing at Forbes, Goodman says that today that number has almost doubled — to 11 billion. And the way Medicare pays, is the way employers and insurance companies also pay. Of all the things that are bad about our health care system, this probably should rank near the top. Yet it rarely gets the attention it deserves. See: What’s Wrong with the Way We Pay Doctors?

Yet it is the critics who don’t understand how Obamacare is working and how it needs to be reformed. What Trump and Vance are talking about doesn’t mean we have to return to the (pre-Obamacare) bad old days. It means we can look forward to a much better future. More

Even though the United States has the most expensive health care system in the world, we have fewer doctors per capita than most other developed countries, and they are seeing patients less often.. The average wait to see a new doctor in this country is 3½ weeks. At the worst-performing hospitals, one in ten visitors to the emergency room leave without ever receiving medical attention – apparently because they get tired of waiting. Solutions: Let nurses practice to the top of their training and open new avenues for foreign-trained doctors and medical school graduates without residencies. More.

The common perception among commentators and pundits was that the Democratic National Convention was devoid of any focus on issues. There was a lot of joy. But very little substance. Except for one rather remarkable exception. As the Wall Street Journal put it, “the delegates united in blaming corporate greed for high prices.” As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote, “Voters want to blame someone for high grocery bills, and the presidential candidates have apparently decided the choices are either the Biden administration or corporate greed. Harris has chosen the latter.” There is just one problem. There is no such thing as an economic theory of inflation – including high grocery prices — that is based on greed. More.

People with costly medical problems who lack the ability to pay for their medical care and also lack health insurance pose a social problem. The American way of dealing with that problem is to force the private sector to bear the full cost of solving it. In response, employers have adopted health plans that are attractive to the healthy and unattractive to the sick. More.

John Goodman and Steve Moore say that Trump’s idea of abolishing the SS benefits tax is too expensive. But it is probably the worst tax on the books. They show how to get rid of its worst features without a big loss of revenue for the government. More.

All government regulations face a persistent problem. By their very nature they are trying to keep people from acting in their own self-interest. Either they try to keep people from doing what they want to do, or force them to do something they don’t want to do. In health care, no one in the system, including the regulators themselves, has a self-interest in making sure the system works the way almost everyone thinks it should work. More.

Why do so many high-income, highly educated people vote for liberal political candidates? Is it because they feel guilty and they are altruistically voting against their own interests? John Goodman says its more likely that these folks are just as self-interested as everybody else.

Now that the Republicans have had their convention, more than one columnist is asking, “What big ideas do the Democrats have to offer?” John goodman has made some suggestions. Since liberals have basically exhausted any sensible good that can come from more regulation, his suggestions all involve deregulation –especially in areas that Democrats have shown a particular interest in – including housing, medical care, education and jobs. More.