Sowell - The "Costs" of Medical Care

Thomas Sowell has written another good commentary called The "Costs" of Medical Care.  Sowell notes:

There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor's office and more in taxes-- or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you. 

Costs are not reduced simply because you don't pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.  

Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive-- but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.

Of course some of the voters understand this and can see through the sleigh of hand, but most people cannot.  We need to find a way to keep most people from falling prey to such deceptions. It would help if they were educated in real schools that would prepare them with a real knowledge of history, politics, and economics.  People need to be educated in the critical thinking skills that voters in a republic ought to have.  Our present government and socialist labor union run school systems have no incentive to give students these critical thinking skills.  They are happy with blank-minded politically correct and shell-game blind students.  We get exactly what they intend to give us.  The government schools do not fail in their goals, because they do produce the intended zombies that socialists want for followers of the messianic leader.