Horace, > The above article appears to support *my* position... The article states > that in 1980 medical costs consumed 8.8 percent of the gross domestic > product (GDP). In 2000 it consumed 13.2 percent.
I don't think you read it carefully. If you pay attention to the details in this and other analyses, and compare apples to apples then the ~4.5 % bigger chuck of GNP over the past 20 years is mostly due to either "general inflation" (oil-push) or to "consumerism" items that were not available in 1980, and litigation, which you mentioned, but mostly to several new generations of very expensive drugs, some of limited value relative to cost, and a wide range of discretionary service, such as cosmetic surgery and especially cosmetic dentistry which isn't even called cosmetic, better prenatal care, much more extensive testing (MRI etc). Comparing the services which were available then and now, it would suggest that there has been an actual decrease in medical cost, due to productivity gains and such things as lower duration hospital stays. In contrast with oil and petrochemicals, where there is no "consumerism" such as no better fuel choices etc. "medical" is far different as far as being inflationary. There is no doubt that it takes a bigger chunk, but most of that chunk is "voluntary" as it is a consumer issue, or for new services, not-previously available or for new services deemed necessary. But oil, in marked contrast, has pushed everything else up as lagging inflation and it is the very same old stinkin' product. Consequently none of the other increase would have happened at all (except the "consumer choice" issues and the improved products), but the ridiculous litigation expense (which must be limited somehow) had it not been for oil and petrochemicals as the prime instigator. You cannot blame the high cost of medical on the same type of base-push inflation, when the "big items" which all of us end-up paying for, which benefit the few, such things as cosmetic surgery, and new drugs, some of which like viagra, are not necessary for health, or drugs of marginal benefit, which are taken by millions - like statins. When you ending up paying for several million people taking statin at $600 per year per consumer, when fish oil + aspirin at $75 year does almost as well in comparative testing, then this is not exactly the same kind of inflation as in other segments of the economy (and I am not suggesting that statins should not be taken, only that they are a very poor value, and that it is a "choice" issue).... Consequently when there is no choice, and everyone is forced to pay arbitrary OPEC/petrol-mafia style price increases for the same unimproved item, things are FAR different for comparison purposes. There are very few inflationary items in our economy that have the same basic inflationary **push** as oil - it all starts with oil and petrochemicals. Jones
