Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
comments: americanbeacon@hotmail.com
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
While free-marketeers lament the increased socialization of health care under the new expansion of Medicare, there is one self-correcting effect of the legislation that analysts have failed to note. While demographics render the pyramid structure of Medicare (and Social Security, for that matter) untenable, the projected ratio of beneficiaries to taxpayers is probably based on current trends and, therefore, too high.
Why is this so? Because of the innovation-throttling nature of government bureaucracies. Creeping federal influence over the pharmaceutical sector will inevitably lead to a redution in the pace of research and development. As in Europe and Canada, whose people depend on American ingenuity because their drug industries were decimated by price controls and other regulations, drug discovery in the U.S. will slow. The opportunity cost of new therapies that would have been created but will not be is measured in lives. As a result, life expectancies that drive budget models should not be as high as those models probably assume.
In a nutshell, federalization of health care will drive up costs, but will also effectively kill people sooner than a competitive system would, thereby morbidly controlling costs. Perhaps it is not such a big budget-buster after all.
11/26/2003 02:13:00 PM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
