Are you blogging about Cato? Let us know. Send a link our way @catoinstitute or email cmoody@cato.org

• • Georgia Examiner writer and blogger Jason Pye offered his thoughts on Ilya Shapiro’s post about the “Jefferson 1.”
  • Wes Messamore finished his list of the top 100 libertarian blogs and Web sites.
  • Free Marketeros editor James Barcia linked to Juan Carlos Hildalgo’s new report on the success of El Salvador’s free market reforms.
  • Health care writer John Goodman discussed John Cochrane’s recent Policy Analysis on market-based strategies to improve health security.
  • At NRO’s The Corner, Veronique de Rugy is following the debate between Cato scholar Chris Edwards and French economist Thomas Piketty over whether the rich should pay higher taxes.

Who’s Blogging about Cato is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

So screams the headline of John Cochrane’s oped in today’s Investor’s Business Daily.  An excerpt:

Markets can provide long-term, secure health insurance while enhancing choice and competition. Given the chance, they will…

This is not pie in the sky. The market for individual health insurance is already innovating to provide better long-term insurance. Well before it was required by law, insurance companies started offering “guaranteed renewable” policies.

Once you buy in, you have the right to continue coverage even if you get sick, and your premiums do not rise if you get sick.

UnitedHealth Group recently announced a product that gives customers the right to buy medical insurance in the future, at a premium that depends only on their current health status.

For a small premium, you can protect yourself against the risk that your health premiums will escalate. This is only a small step away from full health-status insurance.

The oped is based on Cochrane’s recent Cato policy analysis, “Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.”

You can also hear Cochrane and Johns Hopkins University health economist Brad Herring discussing health-status insurance at this Cato policy forum, held today.

‘Health Status Insurance’ Provides Real Alternative to Universal Care is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

This time, it’s coming from Reihan Salam at Forbes.com:

Choice and Security: Professor John Cochrane’s advice to President Obama

Last week, at a White House forum on reforming health care, President Obama issued a challenge to advocates of less government control of the medical marketplace.

“If there is a way of getting this done [i.e., reforming health care] where we’re driving down costs and people are getting health insurance at an affordable rate and have choice of doctor, have flexibility in terms of their plans, and we could do that entirely through the market, I’d be happy to do it that way.”

More to the point, Obama added that he’d be just as happy to pursue an approach that involved more government control as well, and that seems to be the tack he’s taking…

Congressional Republicans have criticized Obama’s approach, and they’ve been particularly hostile to the idea of a new public insurance plan. They argue that Obama’s reforms will eventually lead to a nationalized health care system. But as of yet they’ve failed to offer an alternative that meets Obama’s criteria for a successful health care reform.

Enter John Cochrane, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Professor Cochrane has long advocated a proposal he calls “health-status insurance,” an approach that could guarantee long-term health security while also freeing medical insurers to compete for customers. To most health care reformers, this sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Cochrane’s paper is, “Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.”

More Praise for Cochrane’s ‘Health-Status Insurance’ is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog