Most students of economics will confirm that shortages follow price controls with the grim inevitability of Greek tragedy. Anyone in denial about this stubborn fact should peruse this study by Nadeem Esmail of the Fraser Institute. Speaking specifically to Canada’s well-known physician shortage, he writes:
The shortage of physician services in Canada is not the result of a market failure … it is the direct result of government interventions in the health care marketplace.
And, for anyone having difficulty making the connection between such intervention and the scarcity of sawbones, Esmail provides a two-sentence tutorial that American voters would do well to absorb before the next presidential election:
Shortages can only occur when prices are not permitted to adjust … In the Canadian health care marketplace, such adjustment is impossible because of restrictions on both the prices and supply of medical services.
If you believe such shortages can’t happen in the United States, think again. Medicare already presides over a Byzantine system of price controls that it is planning to expand. This system has already created primary care shortages in many rural areas in this country, and its planned expansion will create more.
If the voters are foolish enough to bestow the presidency on a proponent of “single-payer” health care in 2008, a shortage of physicians is just one of the hardships they will receive for their trouble.
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