March 9, 2004
Don't miss Jodie Allen
One of Washington's smartest women -- and therefore, one of Washington's finest minds -- is Jodie Allen, who understands and thinks about the big picture. She had an interesting piece, Maybe We Could All Deliver Pizza, in the Washington Post Outlook section on outsourcing jobs to foreign companies. Money graf:
So, short of crass protectionism, what remedies might we pursue? ...... the White House is right that tort reform could reduce incentives for lawsuit-ridden employers to flee. Even more potent: detaching health care coverage from payrolls -- a move, [Kerry pollster Doug] Usher notes, that would also reduce worker anxiety about job loss.
Do look for health care at some perhaps distant point in the future to be untracked from employers and paid directly by individuals. Watch job creation explode at that point -- and huge pressure to cut health care costs from people who will shop around the way they do for groceries.
A discussion of Allen's article appears here.
