Jared Bernstein

And you might say, well, surely they have worse outcomes than we do, given that they're spending 8%, 9% of GDP less.

They do not.

They have as good, if not better outcomes than we do.

What they don't have is, you know...

five miles from where I live, massive houses on the Potomac that are owned by, you know, lobbyists for big pharma.

So by dint of making this an inelastically demanded good, if you need health care, you need it.

It's not shoppable.

You can't get in the house.

You can't go in the ambulance and say, wait a second, I'm going to call a cheaper ambulance.

You know, it's not shoppable.

It's

It's inelastically demanded.

And the prices are completely non-transparent.

You never really know what you're paying for anything.

And expect people not to have their hands in the health care cookie jar, which, of course, they do.

So there is a ton of work to be done there.

I, myself, along with Neil Mahoney, just wrote a piece on how to make health ideas that would make health care a lot more affordable.

They're out there.

We've seen other countries do them.

We should do them, too.