Stymied by Heath Shuler’s response yesterday, I contacted a couple people to request data indicating that government intervention is driving up the cost of healthcare. Mike Tanner of the Cato Institute responded rapidly with the following highly-recommended hyperlink. The numbers are dated, but a cost-benefit analysis indicates that in 2004, government could have lowered overall healthcare costs by $169 billion by eliminating regulations that provide no benefit whatsoever to what are now called healthcare consumers. Estimates of gross costs of healthcare regulation approached $700 billion. Back in 2004, the regulation industry (government) was collecting as much as the Blue Dogs want to spend to provide universal-ish healthcare. Tolls of regulation in terms of human lives are also tallied in the report. You may wish to educate your Congressperson by sharing the word. Thanks.

The link is: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa527.pdf