EconTalk Robin Hanson on Health
11 snips
May 28, 2007 
Robin Hanson, economist and professor known for prediction markets and signaling ideas, offers unconventional takes on health, medicine, and policy. He explores puzzling healthcare findings, argues our brains bias health decisions, proposes signaling and loyalty as drivers of medical consumption, and champions prediction markets as tools to evaluate policy.
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RAND Found More Care But No Health Gains
- The RAND Health Insurance Experiment randomized people to free vs. cost-sharing care and found ~30–40% more usage under free care but no overall health improvement.
- Improvements were limited to eyeglasses; broad objective health measures and subgroup analyses showed no effect over 3–5 years.
Solve Multiple Puzzles With One Theory
- Instead of ad hoc fixes, Hanson recommends collecting many puzzles about healthcare and seeking a single explanation that fits multiple anomalies.
- This disciplined approach aims to explain patterns like heavy spending with weak health returns and poor consumer response to quality data.
Avoiding Death Thinking Drives Demand For Reassurance
- People avoid thinking about death and prefer delegating hard medical choices, so they buy reassurance (insurance or blank-check care) to avoid personal responsibility.
- Hanson suggests this emotional avoidance partly explains demand for expansive coverage and reluctance to weigh quality.