Healthcare anyone? The Breakfast Analogy.
In my last lecture on the Economics of Healthcare we got into a discussion on the latest plans that are floating around Washington. In order to simplify the concepts from an economic perspective, I created the breakfast analogy and here it is. Suppose that a discovery was made in the U.S. that few Americans were eating breakfast and this was causing malnutrition As a result there was total consensus that every American should have a nutritious breakfast. The media spells out the options: (1) A National Breakfast Program supplied by the Government, (2) A Government Supplied National Breakfast Insurance Program where the Government mandates a morning breakfast for everyone (this might include a Breakfast Voucher for low incomes) and (3) A National Breakfast Bank [Yes this is ol’ Prof Timmy’s invention]. Under Option (1) everyone who has the money for breakfast pays a fee into the government. The government in turn decides that breakfast was too important of a meal to be left to