[PEN-L:9423] Re: Re: Shades of Summers

[frank@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Ellen Frank)]

This is a great quote. Though Reinhardt, being in the
pocket of HMO industry, may define efficiency as
what maximizes HMO profits, my economics
textbook defines efficiency as "producing the
precisely the goods that consumers want"
(something like  that anyway).

		Ellen
pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>Uwe Reinhardt, a health-care economist at Princeton University, writes
>that
>"Efficiency very often doesn't please consumers,"
>
>That's because, like many mainstream economists, he confuses efficiency
>with profitability for capitalist enterprises or the operations of "free
>markets" (as in free trade is efficient even if it encourages pollution),
>despite the fact that individual profitability and unfettered markets are
>not the same as efficiency even in the official neoclassical doctrine.
>
>Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
>http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
>