TNR Takes on Medical Innovation

Jon Cohn, whose new book "Sick" is the best primer on the flaws of our health insurance system and the need for universal health care, has a major article in the latest New Republic that takes on what has always the opposition's best argument against change: do anything that limits prices or cuts out wasteful spending and you'll choke off medical innovation. It's a must read, and not just because he mentions my book.

I found his lead anecdote about the discovery of deep brain stimulation to treat Parkinson's disease, which his colleague Michael Kinsley suffers from, was illustrative of everything I tried to show in my book: 1) innovation is the product of science, not money; 2) it often involves serendipity, which can't be bought; and 3) a tremendous amount of what passes for innovation is waste, pure and simple.

Cohn argues that universal health care, which to be affordable will have to limit wasteful spending, will not choke off innovation (or lead to long lines for care). Done right, a universal system can eliminate waste while leaving the real sources of medical progress -- public sector science and the dedicated medical scientists' eternal quest to improve the human condition -- intact.