David Farenthold's article about the human psychology of efforts to deal with climate change, cited in my previous post, also has considerable relevance to the ongoing efforts to reform health care and health insurance. In this arena too, the 40+ million uninsured have few advocates because for the rest of us, it's a problem that affects someone else. Many are tempted to think that the burgeoning cost of health care too is something that will happen to somebody else at some other (future) time, but that's a little less certain. Crippling costs are here now, and unchecked, they can easily affect most of us during our lifetimes.
Elsewhere , Ezra Klein claims that lower health care costs always mean higher wages, and that employer-provided health care is not so much a "benefit" as a wage deduction. If consumers could see their employer's health care plan "costs" them (by having it shown on their pay stubs, for example), they'd be more likely to consider costs in choosing plans.
Both premises are flimsy. Many factors besides HMO costs drove the upward trend of incomes in the 1990's; besides, employers are just as likely to absorb any cost reductions as to pass them along to employees. Further, I believe that the reason more people don't shop price in an employer-provided insurance environment is that accepting the employer's plan is just a lot easier than the long, arduous task of sorting out the purposely confusing elements of a dozen or more different plans.
Still, there may be a nugget or two in Klein's idea that people need to be shown a link between the costs of their plans and their disposable income. Maybe that's the key (or one key) the psychologists are looking for -- a way to make clear to people that they face problems that do affect them directly and currently.
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