Quote:It's called supply and demand. It's called fixed costs. It's called inflation over time. It's called economics.


My point remains valid, and is why you cannot pinpoint rising price of healthcare to LBJ and government subsidies.


Just like food stamps, Medicare covers an overall package. Therefore, we should be seeing an exponential rise in food costs if your faulty logic based on a spurious correlation was correct. It's not. Subsidies, ie Medicare, is not the cause for the exponential rise in healthcare costs. It's more complicated than that. There are many variables that cause this rise.


I know it would fit the world view of evil subsidies from the bad federal government to be the culprit. But unfortunately for some, it does not work that way.


Beef has gone up in price because of increased demand, increased costs to produce beef--including land costs, labor costs, transportation costs, feed costs, water costs, inflation, etc, with supply opportunities that while are still good, are not keeping up with the demand.


To be fair, you can say food stamps increase the demand, sure. But the system isn't breaking down the way your model would describe. And that is because your hypotheses that government subsidies creates an artificial price bubble is incorrect.

 

Farm subsidies = higher prices

 

Energy subsidies = higher prices

 

Tuition subsidies = higher prices

 

Healthcare subsidies = higher prices

 

Government involvement in the free market = no free market

 

These are pretty basic and easily proven economic concepts, so simple that only very smart and highly educated leftists can't understand them. 

---