Yes, healthcare demand is inelastic. Dental care is actually not inelastic. A huge percentage pass it up. Where the absurdity of healthcare costs come from, in

Yes, healthcare demand is inelastic. Dental care is actually not inelastic. A huge percentage pass it up. Where the absurdity of healthcare costs come from, in the US, from my experience as a provider there and in Australia, is the huge information assymetry (ie most people cannot doctor themselves - this is true everywhere) along with, in the US, the need to practice hugely defensive medicine and a drive to add in and bill for as many things as possible. The country is totally fucked (on a healthcare basis at least) because the construction of so many perverse incentives has driven the whole mode of behaviour out of whack