Efficacy

Abstract

Some people express concern that social minimum programs might be ineffective, inefficient, counterproductive, or unnecessary. This chapter focuses on three specific worries about efficacy that are often expressed in real-world debates about universal health insurance: the worries that universal health insurance systems would not improve aggregate national health, that they would reduce medical innovation, and that they would produce waiting lists. The first is best addressed using purely factual information, but concerns about innovation and wait lists require philosophical analysis. The chapter argues that concerns about innovation and wait lists are philosophically misguided.