How’s Obamacare workin’ out for you?
Homeopathic Economics
Originally posted on 30 July, 2012
Homeopathy is a form of quackery that bases medical treatment on the idea that stuff which makes well people sick will make sick people well. Obamacare is, among its many faults, a form of homeopathic economics.
Consider the effect of the Medical Device Excise Tax on unemployment. It’s a basic principle of economics that if you tax something, you’ll get less of it. That’s one of the justifications for the taxes on tobacco products. So if we tax medical devices, we should expect that the demand for them will go down (to the extent that it is elastic) or that manufacturing will contract because of the increase cost (to the extent that demand is inelastic) creating shortages. Either way, the costs to consumers go up and the need for employees at device manufacturers goes down.
Only an…
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