Ezra Klein: Health Insurance Works

Ezra Klein writes:

Ezra Klein: Health Insurance Works, Trusting Its Detractors Doesn't: Some of you asked me to take a look at The LA Times op-ed by Michael Cannon and Michael Tanner on why universal health care ain't all it's cracked up to be. I should preface this by saying that I like Michael Cannon.... [I]n trying to give him the benefit of the doubt here, I will say only that this article is violently, even surprisingly, misleading.... Cannon and Tanner write, "[y]ou may think it is self-evident that the uninsured may forgo preventive care or receive a lower quality of care. And yet, in reviewing all the academic literature on the subject, Helen Levy of the University of Michigan's Economic Research Initiative on the Uninsured, and David Meltzer of the University of Chicago, were unable to establish a 'causal relationship' between health insurance and better health. Believe it or not, there is 'no evidence', Levy and Meltzer wrote, that expanding insurance coverage is a cost-effective way to promote health."

Believe it or not, Cannon and Tanner are misrepresenting the study's conclusions.... [H]ere's what Levy and Meltzer actually conclude, in their own words:

The results of small quasi-experimental studies provide only mixed evidence that health insurance affects health, while larger quasi-experimental studies and the RAND Health Insurance Experiment provide consistent evidence that health insurance improves health. Only one large-scale quasi-experimental study (Perry and Rosen) fails to show a relationship between health insurance and health, and this study may not have adequate power to rule out the possibility that health insurance improves health. Taken as a whole, these high-quality studies of the health effects of health insurance strongly suggest that policies to expand insurance can also promote health.... We are left with the conclusion that health insurance can improve health but remain unable to say exactly which interventions related to insurance will do so most effectively...

Is there a way out? Or will Ezra have to add Michael Cannon to the list of people we read with great suspicion?