Monday, February 22, 2010

Obama Goes for Total Control of Healthcare

Seeking to revive his stalled health-care legislation, President Barack Obama is proposing a new idea to address health costs, giving the federal government authority to block insurers from making premium rate increases, reports WSJ.

Put simply, if I control what price your business can charge, I control your business. It's a lever even Archimedes would be impressed with.

Point 2. Price controls don't work. The laws of supply and demand economics can not be overruled. A price set below the automatic supply and demand price will simply mean shortages.

This is basic Econ 101 stuff. Only the clueless or a someone desirous of being a dictator would try to institute such controls.

2 comments:

  1. This morning, on my daily stop at a local convience store, I was greeted by a headline on the local newspaper: "Obama to lower health care costs."

    After laughing at the headline, I scanned the first paragraph. I saw there were price ceilings and shook my head. If this trash gets through, the already expensive and non-free market health care in the US will get worse because of either shortages or reduced care to make up the deficit incurred by the price controls.

    What is already a mess is going to be made worse by this stupidity. In this thing, here's more taxes, more regulation, and more problems. What scares me is that the bar is set pretty low on the taxation front. Any small business is going to get hurt here. There are fines for companies that do not insure employees, which will create a situation of higher unemployment. Why create jobs and hire people if you can't insure them and can't pay the fines to not insure them?

    What is proposed will make things worse.

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  2. Their consumer bill for credit cards kicked int today. I've been hearing on the radio for about a week now what that means -- higher interest rates, lower credit lines, canceled cards, more penalties, and higher fees.

    Viva la revolucion.

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