From a reader:

Jonah, To comment on that New Yorker article–I talked with Burkhard Bilger when he was writing it, and two of the people he interviewed, Komlos and Steckel, are good friends. I was a dissertation student of Steckel’s and have also written on the subject. It is surprising that they comment favorably on state-directed medicine. Komlos and Steckel are Chicago Ph.D.’s and definitely market-oriented guys. Someone will probably write to tell you not to believe those wacky liberal college professors. These guys are not wacky liberals, and the results in that article are sound. I hate to say it myself, but I think they might be right.