An article in the Detroit Metro Times article mentions 27 candidates in support of “Medicare for All,” a $15-per-hour minimum wage, free college tuition, universal pre-kindergarten, publicly-funded campaigns, and mandated paid sick leave.
The @metrotimes included me in their article on the most progressive Democrats running in MI. This campaign is about giving a voice back to the people, and I’m inspired to see so many others that share that vision. https://t.co/q0TtAicmU4
— Laurie Pohutsky (@lpohutsky19) July 28, 2018
Candidate Laurie Pohutsky says she is inspired.
I am inspired too, enough to write this.
Dear Bernie Sanders Wannabees,
Please pay attention.
There is no such things as a “free lunch, free education, or free health-care”. The cost comes from somewhere.
It is precisely because of Fed policies and affordable housing programs that housing isn’t affordable.
It is precisely because of insane public union contracts, student loan programs, and other government interference in the free market that the cost of education is high.
There’s a guaranteed way to make education costs even higher, and that is to make education “free”.
Here’s a Bernie Sanders 2011 flashback.
The latest spreading idiocy, is universal basic income.
Dear wannabees, in case you did not yet get the message, there is no such thing as free money either.
There is a right to free speech, which Ironically most of you wannabees don’t want. But when it comes to “free” goods and services, the countries that offer the most of them, like Venezuela with gas at a penny a gallon, end up like Venezuela where no gas, no food, and no medical care is available at all.
Venezuela is how “progressive” socialism inevitably ends.
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Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Venezuela? That socialist utopia where 15% or more of the population is eating rats and garbage just to survive? They are literally drowning in the world’s most valuable commodity and still starving to death under a brutally oppressive regime promoting the ultimate failed economic model…..unreal that gullible people think socialism works given its perfect track record of failure, human rights violations, and impoverishment and suffering.
How is it that the banking sector creates money all the time via mortgage lending (which funnels money unproductively into the real-estate sector), but many people can’t countenance money creation for productive purposes like, say, ensuring adequate healthcare? Surely money created and used for productive purposes is “free” in that the productivity gains make sustainable the resulting increase to the money supply? I’ll grant you that leaves the problem of figuring out what will be productive, but let’s at least set the terms of the debate appropriately.
Why is Venezula the example used for progressive socialism?
Don’t most of the rest of the advanced democratic economies in the world (Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada) provide mostly free health care, daycare, college, sick and maternity leave?
Obviously they have much higher taxes to pay for these services, but they are a long way from failed economies.
“Why is Venezula the example used for progressive socialism?”
Because, as Mish stated, it is how progressive socialism inevitably ends. Ends is the key word.
So you expect the US economic system to last longer than the other advanced economies of the world? I hope you are right, but I have serious doubts. The proles are in revolt.
Yes, the US economic system has already outlasted every other contemporary “advanced” economy of the times. The only realistic threat to it has been increased internal socialist policy.
Because there’s so much real data available now that shows how catastrophically socialist policies fail is the reason socialists have to keep inventing new names for those same failed policies. This week it’s “direct monetary gifting”.
As long as politicians can lie to get elected and people believe the lie (and have the votes that count), such schmucks will keep getting elected.
This is the classic problem everywhere. Guys who create the problem (with such promises) do not get punished. It is not as you sow so you reap. It is someone sows and you reap. The pain is inflicted on others who are not the particpants. Assume a number of prudent people understand that there is no free lunch and vote for a candidate who does not promise it. As long they are in the minority it does not count. The”free lunch” candidate wins.
I have always felt that having a constitutional bench (assuming they work for the citizens) that hears the promises made, how they are going to be fulfilled, what are the consequences etc. and then decides whether the promises can be fulfilled before the promises can be aired. As long as politicians can promise the moon without the consequences and have the votes to win (along with a central bankers at the ready with the printing to bail them out and screw prudent people, savers, retirees) we are doomed!
Yeah except in the case of a new paradigm of direct Monetary Gifting which no matter how many times Mish yells its socialism it ISN’T socialism because it takes from no one. RE-distributing other people’s money is the definition of socialist RE-distributive taxation so if it does not RE-distribute someone else’s income IT’S NOT socialism. It increases individual incomes and as I pointed out with a high enough percentage discount/rebate policy it absolutely will eliminate the possibility of price inflation. Retail sale is where production becomes consumption and so it is the end of the economic process. If you go to a store and buy $100 worth of groceries has anyone here ever gotten a call from the grocer saying that you owed them another $20? No, because its the end of the economic process. You own the production. So if you do the 50% debit-credit discount/rebate policy at that point you can double everyone’s purchasing power and because the merchant gets his discounts rebated back to him…everyone wins.
The money you’re “gifting” has to come from somewhere. Either through taxation or printing from thin air. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?
The monetary gifting you propose is socialism because you take from everybody to give to everybody. Value of dollars would drop and there would be large inflation if your system came to being.
“Yeah except in the case of a new paradigm of direct Monetary Gifting which no matter how many times Mish yells its socialism it ISN’T socialism because it takes from no one.”
Chicago and Stockton cannot print money.
“Does money by itself raise prices?”
Yes it does in practice and we have several historical examples that show us just that. Weimar, Zimbabwe, and most recently Venezuela. There isn’t an example of printing fiat without corresponding increase in GDP that hasn’t caused inflation, often hyperinflation. Note that increased consumption is not increased production. Handing people money for doing nothing disincentivizes production.
It is a strange conundrum — the Democrat Party has effectively controlled much of the country for decades through politics, the bureaucracy, academia, the media; and yet there is no bench strength in the Democrat Party. They have to rely on burned-out ancients like Hillary! and Bernie. There are no shining stars among the Democrat place-holders in the Senate, the House, or the Governorships.
One might have expected the party with an effective lock on power to have attracted able opportunists, at least. But that has not happened. Why?
Most likely because for the last 30+ years the economy has stagnated and individual incomes have actually declined. Then, with the ultra conservative, neo-secessionist talk radio of Rush Limbaugh and the conspicy mania of Alex Jones the seed was sown for an irrationally tribal constituency that would elect a Trump.
Consider this article from Big Think
The answer to disintegration is not further disintegration, but re-integration of the truths in opposing perspectives. Every word and act out of Trumps mouth is disintegrative as Mish himself has partially chronicled. Trump’s and Bannon’s belief in “The Fourth Turning” is proof of this as the fourth turning is actually just the chaotic result of not accomplishing the thirdness greater oneness of the integration of opposing economic and political truths.
That does not really address the issue of why the winning Democrat Party is so bereft of talent. Either smart people can see that the increasingly Far Left Democrat agenda is going to end in tears (and so do not want to lead that parade to destruction), or the geriatrics in charge of the Democrat Party deliberately screen out young people with ability (just as the geriatric communists in the defunct USSR did).
Trump will deliver a version of himself from the left. The reaction to Trump will be an angry, loud populist of the left. The demographics favor the left. Any acceptance of Trump and his populism, any acceptance whatsoever of him, or destroys the norms and values that protect us from the Sanders’ and Chavez’ of the world. Mish, reconsider your lesser of evils position. Trump never was the lesser of evils, especially relative to HRC but even as to Sanders.
That is altogether a possibility. What we actually need is the integrative third way, not terminal and brain dead orthodoxies on the left, right or libertarian political and economic perspectives.
G.W. Bush had no values. Started stupid wars, tried to push through Amnesty and allowed illegal immigration to continue to try to destroy americanism.
Obama had no values. Started stupid wars, tried to push through Amnesty and allowed illegal immigration to continue to try to destroy americanism. Only difference between GWB and Obama is that Obama was better at talking,
.
What GWB and Obama did was ALLOW millions of illegal immigrants to come to USA that do NOT assimilate and become Americans but instead identify with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras etc.
This is as dangerous as would be ALLOWING millions of illegal immigrants to come from Russia that do NOT assimilate and become Americans but instead identify with Russia.
Trump’s problem is that so far he has been mostly talk on his immigration promises because most of Republicans are weak-kneed political opportunists in the pocket of Chamber of Commerce and Koch Brothers and others who love and want more illegal immigration to boost their company profits at the cost of ordinary americans. Also democrats have gone crazy with actually electing uninformed and unintelligent socialists like Ocasio-Cortez that believe in magic money that just comes from somewhere.
Because of Bush we got Obama. I would say the Obama was the lesser of the evils compared to McCain. If he had won the world would at this point be a nuclear waste site. He never encountered a problem that couldn’t be solved militarily. The one thing I like about Trump was that he called out the stupidity of Bush’s wars and the more importantly he promised to drain the swamp. He wrote down a checklist of what he was going to do. I never like Trump the man even before he ran but I like most of his ideas. He is an annoying inarticulate egotistical sob that needs a filter. Whenever he reads a prepared speech he is pretty good but I can’t even stand to listed to him otherwise. The crux of the matter in this corrupt oligarchy political system is election reform. One longer term only for all like a 6 year term , no political donations whatsoever. The govt can socialize the process of election by public funding of the campaigns and prohibiting these assholes from working as lobbyists or running for another office. This all requires a constitutional convention and there is a movement out there trying to do that.
Bernie is another politician that really never had much of any job outside politics. Got into politics in the early 70’s. Maybe bummed around a bit before that. Certainly never created any business, never had to make a payroll, or ever created any non gov’t job for anyone. Every penny he has ever made came out of the pocket of taxpayers and every bit of any fame he has is all from politics. Most of the Dem candidates these days seem to be either career politicians or career politicians/lawyers (Clintons, Obama, Biden). Lawyers don’t build or make anything, they look for loopholes in laws and there is way too many of them.
Whenever some nit-wit mentions that they are in favor of ‘Free education’, I ask them “Who is going to be willing to teach your courses for nothing?”
I never seem to get a straight answer.
No one of course, but if you could teach others at 50% cost to them and yet you could get 100% of your best competitive price with a discount/rebate policy….how many more students and hence more profit as an educator could you make????
Sorry, but the Rube Goldberg scheme you have described is very convoluted, but definitely not “free”.
Not Rube Goldberg scheme. It’s simply an intelligent and insightful use of the debit-credit nature of one of humanity’s greatest inventions double entry bookkeeping….which just also happens to be the integrated underlying infrastructire of all commerce. That’s why its a new paradigm. Anew paradigm is a new idea that fits seamlessly within and creates a new pattern in the body of knowledge/area of human endeavor the paradigm is applied to. And it IS free, freeing and will make the economy free flowing.
The demands for free education come from the fact that education costs too much in USA right now and the price inflation of education has been as rapid as that of healthcare. Cost of education would drop if student debt would be made dischargeable in bankruptcy because then getting 200k in student debt for a useless degree would stop because the funders would not want to lose that much money so price of degrees would drop by 50%-75% just because people could not afford them anymore otherwise.
So you do not believe in free compulsory K-12 education? It is difficult to have a democracy with an uneducated population. What system do you propose?
You have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, etc. Not happiness nor free money.
That reminded me of Rick Santorum and how politicians can turn the plain meaning of a simple phrase like pursuit of happiness upside down: “Happiness was not going out and doing whatever you want to do to make yourself feel good. Happiness was not doing what you wanted to do, but doing what you ought to do, because that’s what leads to true happiness.” In other words, pursuit of happiness is not pursuing what makes YOU happy, it’s pursuing what makes Rick Santorum happy.
Correct. Unless you want to escape the complete unworkability and collapse of profit making systems because of ever rising costs due to the ever increasing depreciation costs of ever increasing fixed capital. And then, after you realize that fact, you recognize that direct Monetary Gifting is the only way to save the profit making systems you admire so much. Paradigm changes always entail inversions of orthodoxies.
Care to show us, with some precision, how your Feee Gifts from Manna system works? Or is the whole thing, like the entire rest of the progressive canon, nothing more than Newspeakian, undefinable mush? Aimed at making the weak of mind feel good about themselves for being able to regurgitate what they perceive to be impressive sounding words? Words they don’t even understand, much less are able to define with any level of precision.
Sure. You start with a $1000/mo. universal dividend to everyone 18 and older and then implement a policy of a 50% discount to the consumer/rebate of the 50% discount back to the retail merchant gifting it to their consumer. The monetary gifting is created and distributed by a monetary authority specifically mandated to do so. As final retail sale is the terminal expression point for any and all forms of inflation and is also the terminal ending point for the economic process a 50% reduction in price at that point will eliminate any possibility of inflation and will in fact integrate price deflation painlessly and beneficially into profit making systems, double everyone’s potential purchasing power and so also double the free and available amount of individual income for any and all businesses’ products and services so its wonderful for both the individual and enterprise. As hyper inflation never and cannot occur without a specific set of disasterous temporal and economic circumstances and competition is also alive between business models you would not see significant price rises throughout the entire process of creating a product and marketing it, and even if there was some garden variety inflation the discount/rebate percentage could be tweaked/increased to prevent any erosion of purchasing power. Also as I have posted in this thread these policies would end the costs of transfer taxes and almost entirely enable the elimination of corporate and individual income taxes as well so any increase in prices by enterprise would not be justifiable by anything but greed….and individuals and purchasing agents are smart enough to recognize such bad actors and rather quickly they would cease and desist in such anti-social behavior…or rather rapidly lose market share and go out of business.
There are other benefits and “knock on” effects to these policies as well like the ability to re-industrialize America due to the fact that with the dividend and discount policies we wouldn’t need to worry about unemployment. And if we had twice the purchasing power without inflation its obvious that we’d have more employment than if we didn’t have such policies and relied upon the “pulled three ways from the center” policies of liberal or conservative economic orthodoxy. You need to step outside of orthodoxies on both sides to see the efficacy of the new paradigm. And cynicism is just an opportunity to not look.
That wall of text was difficult to go through.
What I got out of it was : The government will pay half the cost of a consumer’s spending to merchants up to $1000 total.
You do realize that just because retail is where inflation is expressed to the consumer does not mean you can control it, right? The increased demand will filter back all the way to raw material producers, leading to price increases feeding forward through the various stages of production until the retailer is reached. Your discounts will be applied to ever-increasing prices.
Increasing the discount to account for this is no different than just giving the consumer a escalating quantity of free money to pay for it in terms of end effect. Eventually you would destroy the currency as the government would just be going into deeper and deeper deficit spending to provide this “benefit.”.
That’s why I also advocate a 25% “pass on” discount/rebate policy at the point of sale from one business model to the next in line toward retail sale. That way price deflation is linearized throughout the entire economic process and serial price inflaters would risk losing market share if they inflated because garden variety price inflation is generally only 2-3% due to competition. And any greedy schemes to thwart and/or de-stabilize the system would be rooted out and punished via sin taxation and eventually by getting kicked out of the beneficial system by the new growth/employment area….forensic accounting.
And there is no $1000 limit to the discount. In this system a $30,000 car would cost the consumer $15,000. Money is not the problem. Delusional fallacies like “monetary” inflation are.
So, they will start with a $1000 month “dividend” to everyone AND government will subsidize prices? That’s how this reads.
In the end what I see here is just a variation of giving money to consumers. Instead of doing that government will “hide” the inflation by providing the money directly so that the consumer sees a steady price. It should be obvious that it’s the government that gets stuck in an ever-escalating cost spiral and in the end the effect is the same. The dollar will be destroyed. Folks in the US may not realize it is happening as prices appear “stable” but the rest of the world will.
You haven’t made it clear how the pass-on discount works but it doesn’t matter. It cannot be imposed on the entire production chain unless it completely resides within US borders. Once the dollar is destroyed externally the production chain gets broken.
Are you Steve Hummel? It took me a while to recall the name but he was the first I saw on Mish’s site with basically the same type of material. If he isn’t coming back under different names it quite the coincidence that the others use the exact same tactics, such as attempting to disparage by accusing folks of hewing to orthodoxy or believing they can make something “fallacious” simply by declaring it as such.
The new pardigm of Direct Monetary Gifting is NOT socialism and in fact would enable us to immediately eliminate all socialist re-distributive transfer taxes including for social security, and as its discount/rebate policy is strategically implemented at the point of retail sale which is the terminal expression point for all forms of inflation would also pave the way to vastly reduce the “necessity” to limit inflation via business and individual income taxes. Let us have the true “ownership society” with the new paradigm and all of its benefits for business and the individual….instead of the onerously indebted society we have now.
Except who decides who gets that Direct Monetary Gift? So long as humans are involved with those decisions you are just shifting the economic imbalance to another group. Take from one, give to another, until there’s nothing left to take from anyone. Remove all incentive to work hard in order to prosper and soon no one will work and no one will prosper. No thanks. Free market capitalist economics isn’t perfect but it sure beats the hell out of every other system devised by man.
Of course, it’s socialism. It takes money from somewhere and redistributes it. Stop the bullshit.
Wrong. There’s no RE to it…which is what makes distribution socialistic. Look at it and be honest Mish…or be exposed as an orthodox BS er.
No one’s pocket gets picked….hence not socialism.
Step 1: Get out of bed at 6 AM and go to work (at a real job).
The math is a bit backwards. In countries with universal healthcare the per capita expenditure is about one half of that in the US. Here we spend about 19% of GDP on healthcare and the rest of the industrialized world about 9%. On top of that we rank 38th in health dead last of the industrialized countries. These are figures Buffet and Bezos quoted in their quest to launch a study project to bring down costs. I do think healthcare is a right. Families should not have to worry about being able to afford medical care for their children. We provide police, public education and defense, healthcare should be included. The Canadian system which is so often maligned by our ignorant corrupt politicians is well regarded despite some problems. They just voted the politician who enacted universal healthcare in CA as the most popular politician ever in the country.
Democratic Socialism
A fatally flawed economic theory and not the basis upon which the new economic paradigm will rest….that presently is in most instances a superior system to live in if you are a human being.
Excessive health care costs in the US are the result of a burdensome government, not the free market. On the one hand excessive regulation in the form of added bureaucracy, limits placed on the number of medical licenses allowed to be issued (artificial scarcity), subsidies in the form of ACA combined with excessive liability due to frivolous lawsuits.
Eliminate those and watch prices plummet. Allow more doctors who graduate from schools in other countries. Relax medical licensing (allowing the patient to choose). Set a high bar for and limit awards from malpractice lawsuits.
Unfortunately we aren’t likely to see either. The AMA who limits the number of licenses have politicians in their pockets, as do the trial lawyers who file the frivolous suits. Once again, government is to blame.
Before anyone should be able to bring malpractice, and any other lawsuit, over anything other than the terms of explicitly entered into civil contracts; the defendant should at a minimum first have to be convicted in a criminal court. No legitimate court can demand someone fork over even a penny, unless he has first been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, of breaking a law, by a jury of peers.
Pretty much the entire civil litigation complex in America is nothing but an extractive kangaroo court. Existing for no other reason than allowing government, on behalf of the useless, worthless but oh so self righteous, to arbitrarily rob their betters.
WTF? So a person can’t negligently cause harm to another person (for example, car accidents) and be held civilly liable without it being a crime? People make mistakes and should pay for the damage they cause either through insurance or otherwise, but most mistakes should not be treated as a crime.
We rank 200th in health. Even deader last.
Or, we rank 1st.
It just depends on which “ranking” is being used.
The only ones dumber than those performing arbitrary “rankings,” are those dumb enough to believe them.
Regardless of where “we” “rank” according to some idiot with an agenda, IF the same health service cost more money in the US than somewhere else, at a very minimum the problem is that Americans aren’t free contract with said lower cost provider to serve them as well.
More generally, it’s proof positive that Americans aren’t free to contract with anyone, anywhere, for whatever service they feel they need. So that they can obtain the lowest cost available anywhere.
It’s easy as peasy to build a hospital in San Francisco, stuff it full of the lowest cost qualified nurses, doctors and technicians from anywhere in the world, buy the cheapest possible acceptable medications and equipment, and undercut the price of any and all existing care providers. The one and only reason it’s not being done, is government enforced rules and bans. Rules banning building whatever you fancy wherever, rules banning hiring whomever from wherever for whatever, rules banning buying whatever medications etc. All of which rules do nothing but drive up cost. In order to shield the priviliged and inefficient from competition.
I am glad you don’t let facts get in the way of forming an opinion. Seems to be a common problem with the left and right. I guess anything is possible if you don’t want t to base your opinion on facts or choose to disregard them.
Education was made public in the US because voters must have certain skills and knowledge to make informed choices. Since the patronage system was replaced by a system based on the Chinese model, schools have also fed the ranks of civil servants. Making schools paid for collectively might avoid a long-standing issue with the Chinese system: The rich locking themselves in to the civil service – the civil service being a common and reliable route to wealth.
Medical care is no more geographically based than food. And less than housing. Rather equal to clothing, perhaps. So using a geographical entity like a region’s government to channel money to providers makes little inherent sense.
As to whether other countries have better medical systems, remember the US already has a single payer system just like those other countries. And the US’s system is fed almost exactly the amount of money other country’s systems are fed. (So says .gov.)
The US system does not handle everyone. It mostly serves some fraction of the heaviest users of health care – the old and infirm. I say “fraction” because I don’t know what percentage of old folks pay extra insurance. (Such insurance is needed on top of Medicare because Medicare has a spending cap. Medicare is not, repeat, not real, catastrophic insurance.)
All that said, it’s pretty hard to figure out the best thing to do when the numbers are obfuscated.
We live in a country where a medical provider prints a piece of paper saying they want $40,000 for something they did. An insurance company says, “here’s the $4000 we agreed to, call it good,” and says to the insured person, “Give us an extra $400 and we’re fine.” After which the medical provider says (I got this from an expert in medical billing and still don’t quite understand how this convolution makes any sense.), “Oh, thanks for the four grand, here’s a thou for your trouble.” And someone adds all those numbers up and says, “Here’s what it costs hard-working Americans. This is an outrage! We need Canada’s system.” 🙂 And, Americans go to other countries to get cheap medical care, and people in other countries come to America to get good care, right now, no waiting.
So, how much do you believe that “9% and 19%”?
It might be instructive if Medicare and the other insurance outfits paid medical bills incurred in other countries and split the difference in price with the “patient”.
So it seems that most think the cause of high health care prices in the U.S. is bureaucracy, excessive regulation, lobbying, etc… And getting rid of this would lower prices. All of which I agree with. Is this the gist of the libertarian idea for health care? Unleash the free market and bring down prices? Just asking because I don’t think I have read what the libertarian plan would be for US health care. Mish, what is your alternative to single payer national health care? Just curious.
Healthcare costs are high because government allows monopolist behaviors from Healtcare providers. Remove the monopolist behaviors and healthcare costs would drop. 1. Currently people are being charged different prices depending on which plan they are on (charged to the healthcare plan provider) or when they pay in cash themselves. There should be one price that is the same for same kind of services whether you pay through a health insurance or in cash. 2. Currently people are NOT told the prices beforehand and there are no published pricelists. Demand that prices must be published and people need to be told the price before operation when possible so comparison shopping becomes possible. 3. Currently large hospitals are allowed to buy up doctors offices around them and discriminate against independent doctors offices in not giving their patients equal access to the hospital. Demand that hospitals must stop rolling up doctors offices around them and that there must be a level playing field so that independent doctors offices have equal access to send patients to the large hospital when needed. 4. Remove competition limiting factors. Currently one does not get a permit to setup a competing medical imaging service near a hospital that charges 20x what it costs in Japan to do Medical imaging tests. In a free marketplace one would setup a competing medical imaging service next to such a hospital immediately forcing the hospital to also drop prices to say 3x what it costs in Japan. 5. Remove the current SCAM where drug companies sell drugs much cheaper to Europe and to Asia and charge Americans huge prices for those same drugs. The price of drugs in USA should be same price drug companies use when exporting drugs. Do those 5 things and drop of Healthcare will drop 50%-75% and as a consequence health insurance costs will also drop 50%-75%
ML1, you say “people are NOT told the prices beforehand”. If not, it’s only because they don’t ask. I DO ask, and I AM told. Recently I needed to see a urologist, and compared prices at several for the treatment I needed. There was a massive difference in price. One was more expensive, and gave a 10% discount for paying the day of the visit. The other was slightly less expensive, and gave a 50% discount. I chose the latter, and to be honest, I would have chosen them had the price been the same, so it wasn’t that I was accepting inferior care.
If you ask, you will be told.
One thing, people often judge a healthcare system by things like life expectancy, which is a poor measure. Other factors, like diet, exercise, and obesity pay much larger factors than healthcare.
Second, there are many reasons why the costs are high in the US. The number one reason why the Canadian system “works”, is that they won’t pay for recent, high-price treatments until the price comes down. By contrast, in the US, the system REQUIRES doctors to always prescribe the recent, high-price treatments. If the doctor prescribes an alternative, less expensive medicine, and there is a bad result, he will likely be sued for malpractice. Doctors in the US have no choice but to practice defensive medicine, and that means extra tests, and the most expensive treatments.
The net result has been a massive boom in medical research because those doing the research know that they can charge whatever is necessary to make a profit. That, in turn, means the US is funding medical R&D (not necessarily done in the US, the US funds R&D done in other countries as well). The US pays the up front costs, then the price falls, and the rest of the world starts using it at a lower price. The only way to stop all this medical research is for the US to go to socialized medicine.
Note that the reason Obamacare has failed is that it made no effort at all to actually control costs. Instead, it actually added ways to increase costs (expanded Medicaid, easy insurance with those with preexisting conditions), and simply attempted to spread the costs differently.