Low-Rent Health

ALTHOUGH universal access has been the Clinton Administration’s main selling point for its health-care proposal, it is clear that the driving force behind it is a desire to rein in medical cost inflation. This inflation, President Clinton told the nation on September 22, “is eating away at our wages, our savings, our investment capital, our ability to create new jobs in the private sector and this Public Treasury.”

Indeed, over the last decade, while the overall Consumer Price Index has risen about 45 per cent, the price of medical care has more than doubled. Although the rate of increase in medical prices has slowed in recent years, they are still rising much more rapidly than other prices.

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Bruce Bartlett

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ALTHOUGH universal access has been the Clinton Administration’s main selling point for its health-care proposal, it is clear that the driving force behind it is a desire to rein in medical cost inflation. This inflation, President Clinton told the nation on September 22, “is eating away at our wages, our savings, our investment capital, our ability to create new jobs in the private sector and this Public Treasury.”

Indeed, over the last decade, while the overall Consumer Price Index has risen about 45 per cent, the price of medical care has more than doubled. Although the rate of increase in medical prices has slowed in recent years, they are still rising much more rapidly than other prices.