And “Issues Week” continues over at The Glittering Eye, where Dave Schuler has posted an excellent discussion of why health care costs keep rising. His reason? Pretty much the cartel that controls medicine:

At root there are two reasons that salaries in health care are as high as they are. The first is that the supply of health care is controlled by a cartel. We graduate no more medical graduates per year today than we did 25 years ago.

The second is that for the first 15 years of the Medicare system the system received essentially no scrutiny. When a bill came in, it was paid. During that period salaries in health care rose at several multiples of the non-health care rate of inflation, significantly faster than any other profession. By the time Congress began paying attention to the situation higher costs were built into the system in the form of higher salaries and fees for health care providers, higher insurance costs, and so on.

His solution?

I believe that we need to increase the supply of health care sharply. To do this we’ll need to see dramatic reductions in the cost of medical education while increasing the number of billets in medical schools, nursing schools, and other medical education—a tall order.

Significantly increased automation could help, too, but this has been blocked for decades by the medical cartel. That needs to change. Indeed, we need a general change in how health care is delivered here.

I would add to this by noting that the medical industry has resisted a lot of common-sense, empirically backed ways to practice medicine in favor or more traditional techniques, which is evidenced by resistance to some in the community against Evidence-Based Medicine.

Here at Heretical Ideas, we’re continuing our examination of the two candidate’s policies with this examination of McCain and Obama’s health care policies.