More on if healthcare now, then education next?

In a previous post, thanks to the chart there, I wondered if education might be next after (if?) healthcare reform is done.

First, my support for healthcare reform is not triggered by increase in costs. That to me is not why society ought to be concerned.
My rationale for supporting healthcare is similar to why I am ok with paying taxes for public transit--some people, for various reasons, are unable to transport themselves. Society ought to provide them with a basic transport system so that they, too, can get to where they need to go.
My support for healthcare reform is only to that extent--to make sure that there is a minimum level of healthcare for every single person within our borders. In fact, I care not whether they are legal or illegal, just as I don't care whether the bus passenger is legal or illegal.

Which is why I put that chart up--the chart that shows that the increase in cost has outpaced inflation. I simply do not care for that logic. Here is a reductio ad absurdum: if we find that the price rise in farm produce lags behind the price index, will we then want to increase the farm produce price? Oh wait, we indeed do that through the massive agriculture subsidies that work their way to screwing up the lives of poor farmers in Africa or India!!! (Note to myself; stay focused here!)

I don't care if the costs go up faster. Because, to a large extent that is a result of the advancements in our lives and how much more affluent we are now compared to even a few decades ago. Here is the Nobel laurate (HT) Robert Fogel on this:

The main factor is that the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent. This is not a new trend. Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875. All of this has been made possible by the growth in the productivity of traditional commodities. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it took 1,700 hours of labor to purchase the annual food supply for a family. Today it requires just 260 hours, and it is likely that by 2040, a family’s food supply will be purchased with about 160 hours of labor.

Consequently, there is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective.

Now, therefore, if controlling cost is our over-riding objective, then higher education will run into more trouble than even healthcare will.