The great (!) health care debate, pt II

Two days after my last post, I am a less bitter person. The health care debate isn't as ugly as I thought. In fact, it's exciting. I attribute my turn-around, in part, to the comments made in response to my last post, and to Dr. David Gratzer.

Dr. Gratzer is a physician (having practiced in Canada and the US) and, according to Milton Friedman, “a natural-born economist.”

His book, “The Cure,” is going to turn heads, guaranteed. We can expect to see it on shelves in October. It features a forward by Friedman and it looks very promising. Although, I wonder if the duo are advocating a health system that's more of a free market than the hybrid I prefer, or if they instead favour a mass reconstruction of the current U.S. hybrid system. Friedman has said that the U.S. “has a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care,” so I assume (rightly or wrongly) that my former presumption is the correct one.

From the book's Web page:

Dr. Gratzer mounts a bold and provocative argument, rejecting the conventional wisdom that socialized health care is compassionate and that top-down government agencies like the FDA actually save lives. Instead, he prescribes a strong dose of capitalism.

Gratzer's Web page at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research features links to his most recently published articles in the Canadian and U.S. press.

Addendum: On this same subject...over at Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux has an excellent post on health insurance. He discusses "...the myth du jour of those who agitate for government-supplied universal health insurance." (h/t Marginal Revolution)