But estimating these things can be perilous.
Government spending on health care drives up demand, and makes further subsidies harder to resist.
Their solution was to create a regulated oligopoly of HMOs to ration health care. The public rejected this solution because it threatened the quality of care. Bradley's proposal shifts the focus back to increasing access while raising costs. The ideal, obviously, is low cost, high quality, and wide access, but evidently policymakers can only get two out of three. There's a lesson here for those House Republicans, including many conservatives, who are letting their distrust of HMOs lead them to support federal regulations that will raise costs and reduce access.