WhiteSites Blog
WhiteSites Blog
With Trump now in charge. Liberals are attacking him from every angle. One issue that Liberals often bring up is womens access to healthcare. It would seem that when all these liberals were getting their Liberal Arts degrees, a course on economics was never a pre-requisite to graduate. So let me explain the basics of economics and how it relates to healthcare.
The price point for any good or service is determined by the intersection of supply and demand. The more you increase Supply, the less things cost. The more you decrease supply the more things cost.
The Oil markets are good example of Supply and Demand. For years Opec control the majority of the supply in the world's oil markets. They could reduce supply if they wanted to get Oil prices up. Then advances in Fracking allowed the USA to tap into formerly unaccessible energy reserves. This increased supply on the world's oil markets, caused prices to drop. The portion of the Oil Market OPEC represented suddenly no longer was the large slice of the pie it used to be. As a result if they reduced supply, it would have only a small impact on global Oil prices, and the end result was they would end up taking in less revenue.
Even though some of the far right conservatives want to overturn Roe v Wade, most modern conservatives could really care less. The way we look at it is, its your body do what you want. Where we draw the line is when there is the expectation that the government needs to foot the bill.
Healthcare services are expensive not because of rising costs, or any other BS. Hospitals are businesses, their goal is to make a profit. Any buisness in which has more demand, than they can supply will raise prices until the demand and supply are equalized. But in order for patients to make these purchasing decisions, they would need to know how much this is going to cost, and I have yet to come accross any hospital that advertises their prices, or is even willing to give patients a quote for ER visits. You don't find out how expensive your 3 hours at the ER were until you get the bill in the mail, which often arrives months later, and from every department in the hospital you walked through. There is no competition in medical care, short of elective services like Plastic surgery, which remains one of the only parts of medical care which insurance doesn't pay for.
It used to be that people didn't have health insurance. They would pay at time of visit. But eventually prices climbed to the point that most people couldn't afford to pay out of pocket. Health Insurance was created, to help spread out the cost to a risk pool. That has lasted for a while, but now we are once again at a point where people can't afford to even pay for Health Insurance.
Then the idea that we need to substidize healthcare for poor people. So now you have government footing the bill so the poor can get care. But that results in even higher demand for the services, and of course with no way to increase supply, which once again results in higher prices.
The fact is Planned Parenthood is watching out for their bottom line. This isn't about access to care, but about Planned Parenthood getting the government to foot the bill for their customers. If the government no longer pays for care, and Planned Parenthood's customers are forced to pay out of pocket, there would be an immediate drop in business.
Now you would think that Planned Parenthood being a non profit corporation that doesn't pay taxes, would be able to get prices down to a point where people could afford their services without the government footing the bill. But when the CEO of the non profit is taking home a million dollar annual salary, and even the vice president was taking home $600k. Its makes you start to question things.
When you demand that someone else pays for the services or goods you want, that is called entitlement. There is no such thing as a free handout. If you get something for free, someone else is paying for it, even if this relationship is not transparent.