Free Market Health Insurance System 'Doesn't Work,' Op-Ed Says

The free market "doesn't work for health insurance and never did" because of "risk, selection and social justice," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes in an opinion piece. According to Krugman, U.S. residents who are in the "small fraction of the population" that "accounts for the bulk of medical expenses" annually will have "crushing" costs unless they have "good insurance." However, he writes, "good insurance is hard to come by" for such individuals because private health insurers "devote a lot of effort and money to screening applicants and selling insurance only to those considered unlikely to have high costs, while rejecting those with pre-existing conditions or other indicators of high future expenses." In addition, Krugman writes, "to the extent that we have to have a working system of private health insurance, it's the result of huge, though hidden subsidies." He concludes, "That system is now failing. And a rigid belief that markets are always superior to government programs -- a belief that ignores basic economics as well as experience -- stands in the way of rational thinking about what should replace it" (Krugman, New York Times, 11/14).