Good Stuff on Health Care Reform: I <3 Thomas Sowell

IBD/Investors.com is reprinting portions of a recent Thomas Sowell book with respect to the economics of medical care. As always, he is spot on with his analysis, whether it is recounting the pointlessness of bureaucracy, or well, basic economics:

Artificially lower prices, created by government order rather than by supply and demand, encourage more use of goods or services, while discouraging the production of those same goods and services. Increased consumption and reduced production mean a shortage. The consequences are both quantitative and qualitative.

Even the visible shortages that follow price controls do not tell the whole story. Quality deterioration often accompanies reduced production under price control, whether what is being produced is food, housing, or numerous other goods and services whose prices have been kept artificially low by government fiat.

I hate when people say "Oh, Canada has free health care! It's so unfair that we have to pay!" It is NOT free. There's this little thing called taxes that pays for this "free" health care that is often so much more inefficient than proponents claim. That is why Canadians cross the bridge to Michigan or New York to get elective procedures, or even non-electives ones, performed: because they don't want to be on a waiting list for eternity.

The Dems don't and won't see it this way. Thankfully, a few principled senators like Joe Lieberman won't let them get away with it.