The slowdown of health care inflation is one of the most under-appreciated stories out there right now. Matt Yglesias had a good summery earlier today and made the really important point that health care cost inflation is in many ways a self fulfilling prophecy. If big companies think that health care costs are going to keep skyrocketing they are going to invest in a higher number of larger and more expensive hospitals. If they think the curve is being bent by policy now, or because future policy makers will work to bend it they will stop planing and building so many larger and more expensive hospitals. In essence the perception of reality becomes a reality, if enough of us believe it. The same way that if enough of us think the economy is going south and act accordingly, that's exactly what it does.
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Over at the Good Men Project I talked about how I don't think Jesse Jackson Jr. should be treated as a hero; problems with the Republican's "replacement" for Obamacare; why Rick Santorum is not going to be the GOP nominee in 2016 and the curious phenomenon known as the conservative information feedback loop.
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