Recommended: Alice in Health Care

Thomas Sowell, as usual, has got right to the nub of the problem with his article Alice in Health Care on today's RealClearPolitics.com. Politicians are either ignorant of basic economics, or care more about their political posturing and re-election chances than reality, or perhaps both.

Anyway, as Sowell points out, back when we spent our own money for medical care, we shopped carefully. Now that someone else pays our medical bills (insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, etc) we act just like we would act if the government paid our credit card bills - we go to the doctor for the most trivial sniffle or scratch. Health care costs are not going to decrease until either (a) the government bureaucracy imposes rationing on us, or (b) we go back to paying our own doctor bills, and shopping more carefully.

Congress thinks they can solve the problem by dumping more taxpayer money into the system (doesn't change the incentives at all) and cutting the amount they pay doctors and hospitals (result - less doctors take Medicare patients, because they lose money on them). It really is "Alice in Wonderland" time in Washington.