Tomorrow (Friday 12/2) I’ll be speaking at the Fall Ethics Forum at Sacramento State. The Center for Practical and Professional Ethics there does a forum every year on a different field of practical ethics, and this year they chose healthcare (some previous iterations look quite interesting, like Bryan Caplan on education and Lyman Stone on population). The event is open to the public if you happen to live near Sacramento, and I hope to be able to post a recording later. But for now, here’s a short preview of what I plan to say:

In many key respects, US health policy is about restricting the choices available to patients and health care providers: banning things the government doesn’t want, while mandating or subsidizing things they want. These restrictions on autonomy are typically justified by the idea that they lead to superior health or economic outcomes. In some cases this tradeoff between freedom and efficient utilitarian outcomes is real, but I highlight some policies such as Certificate of Need laws that appear to harm both freedom and efficiency. I argue that the overarching US approach to health policy is to subsidize demand while restricting supply, which together lead to exceptionally high prices but mediocre health outcomes.

I’ll also take on some classic questions like: when are free lunches truly free? And when is moral hazard really immoral?