That Paul Krugman column from today's New York Times (more about it here) calls the Obama health overhaul "a plan to Swissify America" and says, "a Swiss-style system of universal coverage would be a vast improvement on what we have now." At John Goodman's Health Policy Blog, Linda Gorman reports on how it works in Switzerland: "In 2002, the government banned all new medical practices to control costs. The ban runs until 2010. Until then, a new physician cannot open a practice unless an old physician retires or dies." Yet another example of the strange assumption that in health care, unlike other markets, limiting supply decreases costs rather than increasing costs.

It's not just the post office that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is a fan of. "Our own Veterans Health Administration, which is run somewhat like the British health service, also manages to combine quality care with low costs," Mr. Krugman writes this morning. Maybe he missed the Times article in June about the Philadelphia V.A. prostate cancer unit that "botched 92 of 116 cancer treatments over a span of more than six years."

In Israel, that is, where second-quarter GDP growth turned positive after two quarters of contraction.

FutureOfCapitalism.com, August 14, 2009, on the news that France and Germany had shown economic growth: "stimulus efforts in those countries were smaller than those in America, which, with its bigger stimulus, is having a slower recovery. In other words, more government spending isn't necessarily an economic cure-all."

Wall Street Journal editorial, August 17, 2009: "But France and Germany were among the countries in Europe that resisted Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's imprecations to join the U.S. on the megastimulus bus, and on present evidence this fiscal restraint does not appear to be hurting their chances for recovery."

Google's argument that "The overall benefit to society of publishing information outweighs the benefit to individual companies from restricting it" was the subject of an earlier post here. Now the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz, is getting into the act with a column in the Wall Street Journal buying into the logic of the Google book settlement and passing along the claim that there are "60% of books—some 10 million—that are under copyright but out of print and unavailable in any medium." With all respect to Mr. Crovitz (a wonderful guy) and to Google (a wonderful company), that's an exaggeration. Those out-of-print works may not be available free on the internet or available for purchase new at Amazon.com, but many of them are in libraries, and many are also available at used book store aggregator sites like the truly awesome bookfinder.com, with its inventory of 150 million books.

One of the ways that the existing American health care system isn't exactly a free market is the existence of "certificate of need" laws that require companies or organziations to get approval from a state government before opening a new hospital or clinic or nursing home or diagnostic center. About 36 states have this sort of requirement, the National Conference of State Legislatures reports. It's an idea that's somewhat unusual; after all, if a person wants to open a dry-cleaner or a cellphone store or a restaurant, there's no requirement to apply to the government to demonstrate that there is a "need" for such a store before it opens.

Originally spotted at Amateur Economist:

A good test of how a person feels about President Obama's health-care overhaul is how the person feels about the post office. Skeptics include the former Reagan speechwriter who writes for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan. She wrote on July 24: "Americans don't fear the devil's in the details, they fear hell is. Do they want the same people running health care who gave us the Department of Motor Vehicles, the post office and the invasion of Iraq?" Similarly skeptical is John Stossel, the libertarian-leaning ABC news reporter and blogger, who wrote on July 6 that senators are justifiably skeptical that universal health coverage would work because "They've been to the post office and the motor vehicles department."

India will cut its corporate tax rate to 25% from 30%, the Financial Times reports. The Tax Foundation said in a recent release that "Canada, the Czech Republic, Korea, and Sweden all cut their corporate tax rates in 2009." The Tax Foundation's data puts the U.S. combined (state and federal) corporate income tax rate at 39.10%, which is high compared to other industrialized countries.

The federal goverment's seizure of Fannie Mae hurt a lot of stockholders, but one person who came out ahead was Bill Gross, whose Pimco funds held lots of bonds backed by Fannie Mae. The Wall Street Journal reports this morning that, through a trust, Mr. Gross has bought an 11,000 square foot, nine bedroom, 12 bathroom house for $23 million that he plans to tear down and build a brand-new house to replace in what might be called his own version of the cash for clunkers program. Fannie has taken in about $46 billion in aid from the U.S. Treasury, in addition to backing from the Federal Reserve, this Forbes article reports. In other words, the taxpayers are helping Mr. Gross build his new house. Not a bad deal for Mr. Gross.

"Germany and France have escaped from recession surprisingly quickly, outpacing the U.S. in returning to growth thanks in part to government stimulus efforts," The Wall Street Journal reports on its front page today. If it's the stimulus that is to be credited for the recovery, you'd think that the larger the stimulus, the quicker the recovery. But no; the Journal reported back in March: "According to IMF figures, Germany's 2009 emergency spending is 1.5% of gross domestic product, compared with 2% for the U.S. But Germany's automatic stabilizers will narrow the gap, contributing an additional 1.7%, for a total of 3.2% of GDP. The U.S. stabilizers add 1.5% for a total of 3.5%, still slightly higher than Germany." Smaller stimulus in Germany, but quicker recovery there. The French stimulus was 1.3% of France's GDP, while the U.S. stimulus was 5.5% of GDP, according to this Reuters dispatch. That may overestimate the size of the U.S. stimulus, but still, smaller stimulus in France, quicker recovery there. Now there may be other reasons than the size of the stimulus that France and Germany are recovering more quickly than America. But if the Journal in a front-page news article is going to credit "government stimulus efforts" for the fact that Germany and France are recovering more quickly than America is, the least it might want to do is note that those stimulus efforts in those countries were smaller than those in America, which, with its bigger stimulus, is having a slower recovery. In other words, more government spending isn't necessarily an economic cure-all.

The White House sent out an e-mail blast this morning from presidential aide David Axelrod with a list of eight "common myths about health insurance reform." Some of the eight are things the White House wants the public to think are false: "Reform would encourage 'euthanasia'" or "We can't afford reform." But among the other things the White House lists as "myths" are "Vets' health care is safe and sound," "You can keep your own insurance" and "Reform will benefit small business - not burden it." If these are the "myths," the facts must be really scary. And the Obama team's vaunted communications machine may be less formidable than had been thought.

How much trouble is Obama's health care plan in? Even the ACLU is making fun of it, Josh Gerstein reports.

Britain's Financial Services Authority "should be fighting to build a global consensus around the idea that regulators should ensure that institutions reward long-term profit-making rather than short-term risk-taking," the Financial Times argues in an editorial today. This seems like it would be a challenging task for regulators, who can barely fight fraud and set sensible monetary and fiscal policy, let alone undertake the additional task of devising ideal corporate compensation structures. What's more, the "reward" that regulators are supposed to ensure is already in place. What better reward could there be for long-term profit-making than long-term profits? If any board or management can devise a compensation system that will reliably produce such profits, investors will beat a path to their door without needing a lot of encouragement from regulators. It's the long-term profits themselves that should be a better incentive than a gold star from government regulators. Remember, too, that while the distinction between short-term and long-term profits is one that is often worth keeping in mind, one way that long-term profits are accumulated is by amassing short-term profits consistently over a long series of short terms.

Democrats and some Republicans in Congress want a cap-and-trade bill to curb emissions of greenhouse gases and fight global warming. But some senators are so averse to giving banks a role as market-makers in the carbon dioxide market that they may scuttle the entire bill, Bloomberg News reports. The wire quotes Senator Cantwell, a Democrat of Washington: "The volatility that has existed in the oil market is exactly what we don't want to happen in carbon markets...The banks contributed to that, and the banks continue to contribute to it."