Arnold Relman reviews the Cato Institute’s latest health policy book, Crisis of Abundance by adjunct scholar Arnold Kling, in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Relman is a former editor of the NEJM and an advocate of socialized medicine. Nonetheless, he compares Kling favorably to other economists who write about health care:
[Kling] has done a much better job than most of his colleagues. His book is clear, concise, and eminently readable; he writes in straightforward English prose, not economic jargon; he is modest, posing questions more often than he answers them; and he considers alternatives to most of the policy options he discusses.
Many readers will know that I am a longstanding critic of the economic approach to health care policy, but I liked this little book and can recommend it highly…
I was attracted by a certain freshness and directness in much of Kling’s argument, and I found myself agreeing with many of his observations…
[Kling] intends only to “raise the level of understanding of the realities, issues, and tradeoffs pertaining to health care policy.” I think he succeeds pretty well at that, so I warmly recommend his book to general readers who want to understand what economics has to say about health care.
NEJM subscribers can click to the full review from here. We expect to be able to link to the full review soon from https://www.cato.org/ and https://www.cato.org/.
Crisis of Abundance is available for purchase here.
