If you catch a disease or condition, and therefore you make the number of sufferers from that condition more numerous, the chance they will find a cure or partial solution is much greater. That benefits many other people, not just yourself. In other words, you will overinvest in being healthy. There is much more here.
From their abstract: “current Medicare subsidy for obesity therefore appears to be approximately optimal.” Aren’t we going a bit nutty on the utilitarianism now? What’s next, government subsidizing of our winter and spring break trips to tropical areas so we can contract Dengue Fever, River Blindness, and all manner of tropical diseases that are woefully under-researched?
Hmm. Seems like this would apply much more to non-communicable diseases and conditions, no? I suppose that this may work for obesity. While it does show some properties like communicable diseases, mostly it seems because having obese friends reduces the stigma of obesity, I would think that that for most diseases the problem of spreading the disease outweighs the “increased spending on a cure.”
I guess there could be exceptions for rich people, including people in rich countries, getting conditions normally reserved for poor people, as wintercow20 notes.
Actually, I guess by that reasoning if global warming means a spread of malaria to currently wealthy countries, then that could have net benefits for people in poor countries who already have malaria.
This does not make economic sense. Our ability to find a cure to the disease is not
increased by an additional person being afflicted. It is only our incentive to cure
the disease that is increased. Increasing our incentives to cure diseases is not an
inherent good. Curing the disease is an inherent good, but whether there are more
or less sick people, it will still cost the same amount in investment in medical
research. Additional sick people does not change that.
This silly argument assumes that markets (even more unlikely — government) work. The hottest field for med students is demotology — they would rather give botox shots than find a cure for cancer.
Tyrone, is that you?
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