Q1. In Chapter 1, an overview is provided for why health economics is different from the economics surrounding other types of goods. I would like you to focus on the fact health care is unlike other goods in that people view it as a basic right of human existance. That means that even when people make choices that lead to bad health (smoking, excessive drinking, inactivity, and poor diet) we still feel compelled to provide them with health care regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Do you feel that we owe our fellow human beings health care in such circumstances. If so, why? If not, why not?
Q2. Think about the people your age (or if you are older than 30 think about those under 25) who you have known and who have died. Relate their deaths to those causes of death noted in Table 2.2. Think about the people you know who have died after age 65 and relate their deaths to the causes of death noted in Table 2.3. Finally, think about the people you know who have died in the age range of your parents (45-65). Is your experience with the death of those you know close to the national data on causes of death. Clearly the national data on causes of death put much of the blame on things we do (driving too fast, smoking, diet, drinking, over-eating, lack of exercise, failure to control our blood pressure).
As your prompt: In thinking about causes of death nationally and of those you know and thinking about your own habits should government (through Medicare and Medicaid) or private health insurance companies be allowed to monitor your weight, your blood (for indicators of smoking and drinking) and charge different rates for people who do things that are either bad or good for their health. university has considered charging a lower health insurance premium for people who make promises to exercise with the an accompanying requirement that people making the promise divulge their annual health statistics to university. Is this a direction the country should go?
Q3. Suppose for a moment that everyone agreed that global warming was happening, that everyone agreed that it would have devastating consequences to future generations regarding habitability and food supplies, and that everyone agreed that it was caused by fossil fuels being burned. That still would not enable a typical solution because there are developing countries (like China and India) who are poorer than western countries (in a per capita GDP sense) but are producing as much (or will be producing as much) GHG pollution as western countries. Given that each country is sovereign and a solution cannot be imposed upon them, how would you propose we solve the problem. (Note: if just the western economic powers reduce their GHG to 10% below 1990 levels, there would be no impact on global GHG if China, India and others are not part of the plan.)
Example: My own view is that I tend to trust scientists when, en masse, they say a certain thing is happening but I get REALLY skeptical when they abandon their scientific principles in their arguments. Specifically, there is and has been an aversion by many in the climate community to explain the failure of their climate models to predict the 15 year global temperature pause that is occuring. Nearly all the climate models of the pre-2000 era have overestimated what global temperatures were going to be for 2000-2014. Instead of explaining the pause or that overestimation, they tend to either deny a pause/overestimation is happening or assert that the only people observing the pause/overestimation are "deniers." (Thereby equating those who want an explanation with holocaust deniers...i.e. morons beneath the dignity of an explanation.) That bothers me. Nevertheless, if I had to take a gamble on the question will global temperatures be warmer when my granddaughter dies than they were when I was born, I would say that they probably will (if only because the VAST majority of the smart people who look at the issue say it will happen, just like the vast majority of economists say social security is in trouble starting around 2045.) Given that, I actually think cap-and-trade, negotiated as a world-wide treaty, is, if not a good idea, at least a decent idea. Such a treaty would result in Americans paying higher prices for carbon-based fuels and a large amount of tax money flowing to developing countries like China, India, Mexico, and Brazil. It would suck, but it would suck less than the alternative.