Economists, policy entrepreneurs, and health care reform

Economists would have formulated several aspects of the health care reform debate differently than policy entrepreneurs did. Economists would have questioned whether health care costs must be contained and whether either competition or global budgets were a "magic bullet" for doing so. They also would have emphasized the distortive costs of subsidies and taxes necessary to reach universal coverage, as well as the shakiness of the arguments about international competitiveness and excess insurance industry profits.