Menu
The Goodman Institute Health Blog
  • Home
  • Authors
    • Devon Herrick, Ph.D.
    • John C. Goodman
  • Popular Topics
    • Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare
    • Consumer-Driven Health Care
      • Affordable Care Act
      • Cost of Healthcare
      • COVID-19 and Public Health
      • Doctors & Hospitals
      • Public Insurance
      • Policy & Legislation
    • Direct Primary Care
    • Health Economics & Costs
      • Drug Prices & Regulations
      • Health Insurance
      • Health Reform
    • Medical Tourism
    • Telemedicine
    • Medicare
      • Single-Payer/Medicare-for-All
  • Goodman Institute
  • Contact
The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Anything the government operates or subsidizes has exploding costs

Posted on August 8, 2023August 8, 2023 by John C. Goodman

How Government Makes Inflation Worse

This chart may look familiar to regular Hotline readers. This version is updated through June 2023.

Anything the government operates or subsidizes has exploding costs. So health care and education are the components of the economy with the steepest rise in prices over the last 25 years. Education is 75% run by the government and health care is 50% government.Meanwhile, technology, TVs, computers, clothing, electronics, and toys have fallen rapidly in price. These are goods that are highly impacted by international trade. It’s a good reminder that free trade keeps prices low and makes goods and services more affordable for the masses. Competition is a good thing.

Read the original article on the Committee to Unleash Prosperity’s Hotline newsletter.

2 thoughts on “Anything the government operates or subsidizes has exploding costs”

  1. John Fembup says:
    August 10, 2023 at 12:55 am

    In my 40+ year career, I never met an executive – where I worked, or at a client’s company – who actually liked competition. I think that’s because competition makes execs work harder and, in a market economy, competition never goes away. Those execs paid lip service to markets but I thought they actually regarded the inherent competition in markets as a necessary evil.

    But customers -us – should prefer a market based economy to any other type, for the same reasons. Because competition inherent in market economies obliges companies to offer lower prices or better products and services, or both. That benefits everyone.

    Reminder. A market is where a willing seller meets a willing buyer. Willingness is the key that unlocks the benefits. Thank you, Dr Friedman.

    Loading...
    Reply
  2. Bob Hertz says:
    August 11, 2023 at 5:47 am

    Alex Tabarrok is an economist who helps edit the Marginal Revolution blog. He has written extensively on this issue, asking “Why Are the Prices So G-d-mn High?”

    He notes the same divergence between education and health vs. everything else.

    He blames it wholly on the Baumol effect –i.e., higher labor costs.

    Free trade might indeed lower the prices for consumers….but it also leads to wage cuts and unemployment for the producers. It is definitely a two-edged sword.

    Education and health care are and have been perhaps the major source of new high-wage jobs for Americans. This is probably why we tolerate their galloping inflation.

    Loading...
    Reply

Join the conversation.Cancel reply

For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

Visit www.goodmaninstitute.org

Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 36 other subscribers

Popular Topics

©2025 The Goodman Institute Health Blog | Website by Lexicom
%d