Statins reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death regardless if a person already has low cholesterol.
Mental disorders may arise from competition between the father’s and mother’s genes.
What does this have to do with policy? Both point to ways that technology and new theories can change how we live and how we approach problems.
If we rely on universal health insurance, drug could be limited only to specified groups by law – regardless what new research suggests. On the other side of the ledger, the statin results could be taken as evidence that everyone needs statins and they could become over-prescribed just as Vioxx had been.
One shudders to think what would happen to the mentally ill if we never got past Freud, frontal lobotomies, and electric shock therapy. What kind of medical innovation would we achieve without markets?
Finally, there’s the potential Title IX effect of mental health parity on other insurance benefits. Colleges have dropped men’s sports to achieve equity for participation in women’s sports. Expect physical health coverage benefits to dry up as insurance companies nationwide try to meet the new federal requirement.
