According to the Cato Institute's summary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the new health care bill is bad for taxpayers, businesses, health-care providers, and patients. However, I suspect it is good for the job security of the politicians who voted for it.

Regarding the debate as to whether or not the government should be involved in covering health care costs for those who cannot pay, many statists have argued that cost shifting alone justifies government involvement in the health care industry. Cost shifting is the practice of charging customers two separate rates. The first group of customers cannot afford treatment, but hospitals admit them for free out of charity. The second group of customers can afford treatment. Cost shifting implies that the second group of customers is charged a higher rate to compensate for the losses incurred on treating the first group of patients. Advocates of government intervention will argue that if the government simply covers the cost of the nonpaying patients, hospitals will charge the paying customers less.

There’s only one problem with this statist argument. Cost shifting does not exist in the real world, and it never has. A simple glance at economics will explain why. When firms (hospitals included) decide what price to charge paying customers, they face a tradeoff. A lower price will attract more customers but a higher price will entail higher revenues per unit sold. If a firm charges a price too low, it will risk earning too little on each unit to earn the money needed for day to day operations. If a firm charges a price too high, it will risk selling too few units to earn the money it needs. Each individual firm will find the optimal price to charge paying customers to maximize earning potential.

Tomorrow the University of Washington-Seattle's YAL chapter will host a health care debate between UW Law's Prof. Stewart Jay and the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro. It's in response to the program's first health care forum, for which the school claimed they were unable to find someone to challenge the constitutionality of the recent health care reform bill due to time constraints. 

Citing UW-Seattle specifically, Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow of constitutional studies at Cato, issued a challenge to debate the constitutionality of the bill anytime, anywhere. YAL-UW accepted that challenge, with the help of UW Law, the Federalist Society, UW College Republicans and the UW Young Democrats.

If you are unable to be in Seattle, but would like to watch the podcast, you can find it here. 

This video is great:  What appear to be a couple high school students interview people about Obamacare, while slowly working more and more Pokemon references into their conversations.  Almost everyone they speak with on both sides of the issue is so set in their opinions and uninformed about the actual policy that they completely miss the Pokemon references.  Definitely worth a watch -- and possibly imitating as an easy activism idea for your YAL chapter.

Best part:  "Medicare, Metapod, Medicaid..."  [Interviewee doesn't blink]