------------------------------ Technology and Medical Care (by Don Boudreaux)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/technology-and-medical-care.html>
Posted: 22 May 2009 12:56 PM PDT One often-heard explanation for rising medical-care costs centers on the advance of technology. I'm sure that there are variations on this theme, but fundamentally it sounds like this: technological advances improve medical-care treatments but are quite expensive; this technology must be paid for, so at least part of the higher prices for medical care is a reflection of technological improvements in medical care. Perhaps this explanation is correct; I have no data to contradict it. But my priors make me skeptical of this explanation. Technology creates great improvements in telecommunications and computing, yet the prices of wonders such as cell phones, telephone calls, and personal computers have fallen dramatically over the years. The same is true for transportation. Huge investments in transportation technology -- engine design, the construction of container-shipping facilities, airplane engineering, and on and on and on -- are all, both individually and taken together, quite expensive. Yet the price of moving a ton of freight from New York to London, or a half-ton of family members from home to the regional shopping mall, has fallen continually. Why should medical care be different? It must be the case that some other factor is at work driving up the cost of medical care – a factor that either works in tandem with technological improvements to raise these costs or that works independently of technological improvements to raise these costs. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ZnvuX7fXGGE:O8hGrwLi3gM:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ZnvuX7fXGGE:O8hGrwLi3gM:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ZnvuX7fXGGE:O8hGrwLi3gM:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ZnvuX7fXGGE:O8hGrwLi3gM:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=ZnvuX7fXGGE:O8hGrwLi3gM:gIN9vFwOqvQ> The Mind of the Market (by Don Boudreaux)<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/2009/05/the-mind-of-the-market.html> Posted: 22 May 2009 06:39 AM PDT Here's a fine paragraph from page 67 of Pietra Rivoli's wonderful 2005 book *The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy<http://www.amazon.com/Travels-T-Shirt-Global-Economy-Economist/dp/0470287160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242999494&sr=8-1> *: Americans, and now Russians and Slovaks and Chinese, disdain such central planning for its inefficiencies. A system that ignores market signals, that provides no incentives, that subsidizes losers cannot be efficient in producing goods and services. Central planners will produce the wrong goods, use the wrong inputs, set the wrong prices, hire the wrong people, and ultimately produce shoddy products, and not enough of them, anyway. But to meet [Chinese textile-mill manager] Tao [Yong Fang] in the Number 36 factory is to realize that the real tragedy of central planning lies not in its inefficiency but in its crushing of the intellect, of 20 years of Tao's energy and intelligence laid to waste. For 35 years the spindles in the Number 36 mill clattered, and no one working in the mill had to *decide*anything. So today there is determination but bewilderment as Tao faces the basic questions of running a business rather than turning a cog: what to produce, where to sell, whom to hire, what to pay? [original emphasis] Beautiful -- both the explanation and the humanity-building capacity of markets. <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=Fe-FwMR9Lb4:k-BhXX_d3aI:yIl2AUoC8zA> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=Fe-FwMR9Lb4:k-BhXX_d3aI:dnMXMwOfBR0> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=Fe-FwMR9Lb4:k-BhXX_d3aI:F7zBnMyn0Lo> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=Fe-FwMR9Lb4:k-BhXX_d3aI:V_sGLiPBpWU> <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/%7Eff/CafeHayek?a=Fe-FwMR9Lb4:k-BhXX_d3aI:gIN9vFwOqvQ> You are subscribed to email updates from Cafe Hayek<http://www.cafehayek.com/hayek/> To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now<http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailunsubscribe?k=RD87GWo2xMyNcdDv2g6ct6FC7Lk> .Email delivery powered by Google Inbox too full? [image: (feed)]<http://feeds2.feedburner.com/CafeHayek> Subscribe <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/CafeHayek> to the feed version of Cafe Hayek in a feed reader. If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: Cafe Hayek, c/o Google, 20 W Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
