Arnold Kling’s Medicare experience

Arnold%20Kling%20013008.jpgAs I’ve noted many times, EconLog’s Arnold Kling is doing some of the best writing and thinking about health care and health care finance issues in the U.S. right now. In his latest TCS op-ed, Kling describes the care received recently by his elderly father (who sounds as if he should have been a patient of my late father) and observes:

Medicare is wonderful for relieving the elderly from the burden of worrying about health care expenses. By the same token, it is wonderful for relieving doctors of the burden of worrying about the elderly as customers. You get paid for understanding the billing system, not for understanding your patients.

Read the entire op-ed. An update post is here.

NASCAR golf?

johndalyteeingoff%20013008.jpgThis earlier post suggested a creative approach to generate interest for a PGA Tour golf tournament caught in the Tiger Chasm — i.e., the neverland of golf tournaments that draw nowhere near the interest or publicity as the 15-18 golf tournaments that Tiger Woods plays in each year.
Along the same lines, Angry Golfer John Hawkins points out that chronic party-boy John Daly is creating a similar type of niche for tournaments that are willing to grant him an exemption to play. Daly has made the cut in just 18 of his last 67 PGA Tour events, is currently tied for 156th place on the money list and is 531st in the World Golf Rankings and, in three tournaments this year, has earned a total of $9,805:

I called several tournament heads last week to get a read on whether Daly’s ability to sell tickets is worth the headache he has become. [Honda tournament director] Kennerly didn’t return my phone call, but others were quick to reply, and there remains little doubt that Long John Seismograph moves the needle more than a hundred John Sendens. “It’s a pretty easy decision for us,” says Clair Peterson, who runs the John Deere Classic and already has extended Daly an offer to join the field in July.
“He’s like Randy Moss,” says another. “He’s a freak, he can be a huge burden, but in terms of what he brings you, it’s a very unique dynamic. The NASCAR crowd, whatever you want to call it, is why 80 to 90 percent of the events will give him an exemption if he’s anywhere near the top 100.”
Or 531st, which is where Daly currently resides in the World Ranking, as if the NASCAR gang really gives a Hooters how well their man has been playing or whether he’ll ever contend again on the weekend. The recent face-saving contest between PGA Tour brass and Westchester CC reminds us that every sputtering, non-Tiger event is a possible endangered species. Perhaps 15 to 18 tournaments are in excellent health; the rest lack significance or sound economics.

The products of an entertaining form of corruption

Okie%20STate%20stadium%20013008.jpgInasmuch as the corrupt sponsorship of big-time football and basketball by academic institutions is a common topic on this blog, the following articles caught my eye:

The Chronicle’s Richard Justice surveys several of the ugly recent incidents in big-time college football and calls for higher ethical standards. However, he ignores the perverse incentives built into the highly-regulated system that promote the unethical behavior.
Meanwhile, one of the coaches who has been accused of being ethically-challenged — former Texas Aggie coach Dennis Franchione — turns out to be an over-achiever with an interesting story.
And how exactly is it that Rick Neuheisel was able to persuade UCLA to hire him as its new coach in the face of this curriculum vitae?

Look, June Jones, Rich Rodriguez, Franchione, Neuheisel and the other supposedly unethical coaches of the moment are not, on balance, any more unethical than the rest of us. They are simply the products of a highly-regulated system that creates all sorts of perverse incentives to act badly. Change those incentives and the coaches’ behavior will change. A good start would be to quit paying the coaches the excess rents that should be paid to the players whose talents generate them.