re: #763 CarleeCork

I thought everything was about supply and demand? I would rather subsidize healthcare early than later. Every time someone visits an E.R. we are subsidizing their healthcare costs.

Right….what happens when you increase the supply of money available to purchase a particular product? The costs for that product goes up due to increased use of that product.

We did that in housing, and we got a housing bubble. House prices even now are still well above historical norms as a ratio of house price to household income.

We did that in education and have seen costs raise at a rate much higher than inflation. Even in the past two years where the price of goods have not easily been increased, the price of education continues to skyrocket.

Now we’re going to do the same thing with health care. We’re going to subsidize health care for the majority of the population. Increases in the cost of that care will be hidden in increased levels of taxes collected primarily by the better off. So it will be “affordable” while at the same time the costs will continue their fast increases. A good argument can be made that the third party payer system of health insurance likewise took economic decision making out of health decision by the consumer, and lead to runaway costs. If that argument is correct, the government program will make the problem even worse.