Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
Big difference, with all of those items there are already set costs.
The price of all those items do not have a "set cost." A great portion of the costs are a result of various government regulations and taxes. The price of manufactured goods have built-in tax and regulatory costs that range all the way from the production or growth of the basic materials required to manufacture the final product including the regulations and payroll taxes and social security and medicare and local and state taxes that each of those producers pay and are part of the price of material they ship to the ultimate manufacturer, and the same costs are included in the companies that transport the materials to the ultimate manufacturer, and the same costs that the ultimate manufacturer has to pay its employees again all added to the cost of the product and often the same government costs that private shippers pay and are part of their fee to deliver to retail outlets and, finally, the retail outlet has the same types of governmental regulatory and payroll taxes, etc. that factor in to the final price of the product a great portion of which can be the accumulation of all the taxes and regulations payed along the way to manufacture and sale. It has been estimated that 50 to 60% of the price of manufactured items is in the taxes and fees paid overall. And various localities have different regulations and tax structures as well as differing levels of clientele for products so that prices of the same goods are different in different places, and there are sales and clearances and fluctuating economic conditions that affect the prices. Prices for most products have been rising lately due to multiplicities of factors, not the least of which is government intrusion
The argument made by the Administration is that the price of health care is heavily influenced by how one pays for it.
-spence
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The price of health care is also very heavily influenced by government regulation and mandate. In the case of the Federal Government, much of the mandates are unfunded. It was the Federal Government, in the first place, that forced hospitals to accept emergency patients that have no insurance. It is Federal regulation and collusion that artificially raises the price of drugs to be much higher than necessary. And if the government thinks that a mandate can require uninsureds to pay for insurance, that means it believes that those people could have purchased insurance before the mandate, so it shouldn't have forced hospitals to accept them unless they payed for the uninsured health care they received just as any customer must pay for the product it buys in any other transaction. And the force of local laws would be sufficient for such transactions. As for those that cannot afford to buy insurance, won't their costs still be shifted to those who are insured, even if the government picks up the tab for them in which case the cost is shifted to the tax payer. And isn't the so-called shift in costs that occurs now overestimated--the article that I posted in the other thread relates a study that estimates the cost shift not to be $1,000 for an average policy, but an annual cost of about $80. So the government creates problems, then expands its power in order to "solve" the problems--in this case with a "solution" that is even more expensive for most, and in the same stroke changes the fundamental relation of the individual to the government. Government power expands, individual freedom contracts. But it is all for the better and is more efficient, and the power of government pervades into all aspects of our economic lives, which is virtually all aspects.
If all commerce can be "regulated" by the Federal Gvt., which this mandate would give it the power to do, I ask again, in this thread, for the fourth time, are States and the Constitution necessary? Are they not obstacles to efficient centralized government? Would it not be better to just abolish them?