Ordinary Banana

I think he's being flip, his usual line is that *marginal* healthcare spending is useless or worse.

I know so little economics. So he would not include, say, emergency treatment for Legionnaire's disease or organ transplant?

Yeah, it's more like "after you cover the basics, more money doesn't give better outcomes". But I haven't read him much on this. No opinion

How is "after you cover the basics" supposed to be interpreted? I mean, for any condition, the basics is what has more or less been proven to work.

e.g. http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/07/the-oregon-health-insurance-experiment.html …

So I take it this "But if medicine is good for the poor and *sick*, can’t we presume it is good for *everyone*?" (my emphasis) is key.

This "...folks went wild getting stuff checked out that they’d been ignoring, and all that extra treatment of symptoms they could have ignored for longer led to lots of false positives on tests and over-treatment, making them worse on average." makes perfect sense.

But this is far more nuanced than the original wording.