Beaker’s blog observes,

The medical device industry is shifting and entering a period of deflation after years of rising prices.   This according to Bill Hawkins, the CEO of Medtronic, who predicts the market prices for medical devices to decline 2 percent to 3 percent driven by healthcare reform and sluggish demand.

You think heart patients will succumb to “deflationary psychology“ and  wait a year for stint prices to fall?   My sense is that we have inflation in goods with inelastic demand, such as necessities, and deflation in luxury goods, where demand is more sensitive (elastic) to price.   Golf rounds on weekends are down 30 percent but up 10 percent on weekdays at the local course due to green fee price discrimination.    Do hospitals have a weekday rate?

The shift in relative prices do not fully show up in the inflation headlines  as the indexes are weighted averages and distorted by various other factors.    Interestingly, the huge housing price inflation of 2003-06 failed to show up in the CPI due to changes in how the government measured housing prices in the 1982.    Remember how it felt like inflation, but the data were telling us otherwise?

Wouldn’t it be nice to experience a little deflation in medical insurance?  Just asking…