At September's National Conservatism Conference, Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) argued AI "threatens the common man's liberty" and that "only humans should advise on critical medical treatments." Yet AI promises to enhance the human experience by reducing the price of critical services like health care.
The price of medical care has outpaced the consumer price index by 35 percentage points since 2000. The real culprit isn't administrative bloat but, as George Mason University economics professor Alex Tabarrok and his Why Are the Prices So Damn High? co-author Eric Helland explain, the Baumol effect. As other sectors become more efficient, the relative cost of slow-growth sectors (such as health care and education) increases. In other words, doctors haven't gotten "faster" at healing people, so the relative price of their time climbs.
