April 11, 2025 • 15 mins
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Health Affairs' Jeff Byers welcomes David Simon from The University of Connecticut to the program to discuss the recent news that the Trump administration implemented reciprocal tariffs on imported goods and what this could mean for the health care industry.
Become an Insider today to never miss out on David Simon's exclusive newsletter, Economic Intersections.
Insiders can join us April 23 for an exclusive virtual event exploring site-neutral payments with health economist and health services researcher Brady Post of Northeastern University and Health Affairs' Meg Winchester.
Order the April 2025 theme issue of Health Affairs focusing on food, nutrition, and health.
And, join Health Affairs April 29 for a free and open for all virtual event featuring a conversation between consumer advocate, nutritionist, and award-winning author Marion Nestle of New York University and Angela Odoms-Young of Cornell University.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jeff Byers (00:39):
Hello and welcome to Health Affairs This Week. I'm
your host, Jeff Byers. Hello.Hello. We're recording on
04/10/2025.
Heads up. Health affairsreleased a theme issue on food,
nutrition, and health recently.I hope you are enjoying the
special series from mycolleagues, Ellen Bayer and
Jessica Bylander. The lastpodcast episode on that four
(01:00):
part series will be publishednext Wednesday. On April 29, we
have a related lunch and learnevent for the theme issue.
It's a conversation with MarionNestle discussing the evolution
of US food and nutrition policy.Check the show notes, to join
this free virtual event. Also,our next insider event is April
23 with Brady Post on-siteNeutral Payments, and we're
(01:23):
working on some events, thatwe'll be able to announce pretty
shortly. Today, I'm joined byDavid Simon. David is an
associate professor of economicsat the University of
Connecticut, and he is theauthor of the Health Affairs
Insider Newsletter EconomicIntersections.
In this exclusive premiumnewsletter that you can only get
(01:45):
when you sign up for HealthAffairs Insider, David explores
the intersection of economicsand health care. And with that
spirit in mind, today we aregoing to talk about tariffs.
David, welcome to the program.
David Simon (01:58):
Hi. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me on.
Jeff Byers (02:00):
Just real quick. Where are you in the in the NCAA
double a tournament? Are we donewith that? Let's do a sports
recap. Did did you all win?
David Simon (02:08):
I think we won. I'm not I'm not a sports person. So,
yeah, go Huskies. I believe wehad our big win and and, yeah,
won won won the national.
Jeff Byers (02:16):
To the task at hand, thanks for thanks for joining
SportsCast for a second there.On April 2, the Trump
administration unveiled a planfor reciprocal tariffs. So we
like to think that everyoneevery episode could be someone's
first episode with this. Maybethey're steeped in health
policy. Maybe they're not.
So for those that might beunaware, simply just going way
(02:40):
back, what is a tariff?
David Simon (02:41):
Yeah. All a tariff is is a is a special type of
tax. It's a tax on an importedgood. So whoever, exporting that
good from that country wouldwould would have to pay that
tax. So the what what we thinkof the actual incidence of the
tax, whether it gets passedthrough prices or not, is less
clear.
So
Jeff Byers (03:00):
And so we've probably heard the word tariff a
lot in the news recently. Fromyour perspective, what's the big
news from this? They called itLiberation Day. Is that right?
David Simon (03:08):
Yeah. So I think there were a couple of things
that with all the buildup thatreally jumped out on that day.
And so the first one was, howthe tariff was applied across
countries. Well, so first ofall, it was just more widespread
and larger than anyone expected,at least until the recent
turnaround. And then, associatedwith that, it is when we when we
(03:32):
think about this, it seemed likethe administration was taxing
based on the amount of the tradedeficit, which is not in fact a
reciprocal to the tariffs oreven to the non tariff trade
barriers that the othercountries were applying.
But it had more to do with whojust we tended to be run a
(03:53):
deficit with. And and I don'tthink that was expected, and
that's not typically how wethink about trade policy, and
that was probably the biggestsurprise. I would think the
other major big thing to comeout of this was how the bond
markets enter ended up reactingwhere we had a sell off of
bonds, and that was probably anunexpected consequence of this
(04:16):
as well that that I think endedup being quite important. So
those were the two big ones.
Jeff Byers (04:20):
Yeah. And so you you alluded to this. Again, we're
recording on April 10. Somarkets did drop in reaction,
but you mentioned a comeback.So, like, you know, can you give
us an an overlay of just, like,what's happened so far in the
markets?
David Simon (04:35):
Yesterday was it yesterday? Yes. It was just
yesterday. President Trump,announced a change to the tariff
policy, which was originally inthe sort of wide base deficit
based, tax, and he reduced it toa 10% tax on all countries
except for the, China, I think,was the main one, who he'd saw
as as having, responded withtheir own tariffs, which now has
(04:57):
a quite high tax. And that wasso I think that's now at, like,
120 or around there.
At first, we saw a relief in themarkets because I think it was
so broad based that that in ofitself seemed to have a lot of
disruptions. But then and sothere was a there was a spike
up, though now the market seemedto be trending back down. I
(05:18):
think as they start to price inwhat the effect of these tariffs
could be, how it might affectgrowth because the tariffs are
even without, even with thepullback, tariffs are quite high
still, especially on China.They're they're well above
anything we've seen in recenthistory.
Jeff Byers (05:33):
Yeah. So I don't wanna, start making predictions
about what's gonna happenbecause, a, we probably don't
really know what's gonna happen,and by the time this episode is
released tomorrow, informationmay have changed drastically. So
but based on that, as a concept,how do tariffs affect costs and
prices to both businessconsumers in The US?
David Simon (05:53):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So
conceptually, we think oftariffs, as I mentioned, was a
tax. And so one of the keythings that we care about the
tax would be what we whateconomists call the incidence of
the tax.
That's essentially which side ofthe market pays the tax. So in
the case of tariffs, that wouldbe two people effectively have
(06:15):
to pay for the tax. It's eitherthose who are buying, which
would be The US in this case, orthose who are producing the
goods and selling it, whichwould be, China or another
country who implemented thattariff. And if you look at the
recent sort of research on onChina and previous tariffs that
have been levied, recently byThe US, as well as just sort of
the general sort of what we seewith tariffs in general, that it
(06:37):
seems like most of get that getspassed on to the country that's
purchasing the good, so about a% pass through. So most of the
tax gets passed through.
Now it gets a little bit morecomplicated in that once you
have that, then The US companieswho are purchasing the goods can
choose to either they can eitherchoose to pay the tax. And so
this would maybe like a hospitalwho's importing a medical
(06:59):
device. They can eat it out oftheir profits or they can cut
back production or they can passdown the full amount of the tax
or some amount of the tax ontothe consumers or in this case,
people who are using hospitalservices in that example.
Jeff Byers (07:13):
So, you know, can you give me an example of what
we've seen in the past or, like,how how might that play out?
David Simon (07:18):
Yeah. Absolutely. So, the best research we have on
this recently would I think it'sa 2023 paper that looked at how
tariffs from the first Trumpadministration, where he he
implemented a number of tariffs,on China, how those ended up,
affecting, prices and and whopaid them. I think like like I
sort of alluded to, almost a %of the tariffs got passed on to
(07:43):
US companies. And then thequestion becomes how those
companies responded.
So depending on the industry,some of that money got passed on
directly to consumers. In somecases, lot of it. In other
cases, the companies paid it andthey can end up either eating
down of their profits orpossibly, and what we would
think in the longer term, thatwould be cutting back
(08:03):
production, maybe producing lessfiring workers and that kind of
thing.
Jeff Byers (08:07):
You know, looking back at that research, I want to
ask about the healthcareindustry portion of it. Was
there any information about howhealthcare companies responded?
David Simon (08:17):
They didn't specifically look at healthcare.
They did look at electronics,which is probably close to what
would matter for medicaldevices. I should say the the
other big one from China wouldbe pharmaceuticals, but those
have so far been exempt fromtariffs, even the recent ones.
But but if you look atelectronic devices, most of that
did not get passed through toconsumers, but got eaten by the
(08:40):
producers. And again, I don'tthink we know yet exactly how
they responded, whether that wasjust purely out of profits or
what you might think more of isthat's going to you know,
they're not gonna expand as muchor they might have to do layoffs
or something like that.
They have to cut costs somewhereelse. That's that's their
option. Right? You either payconsumers, you either out of
profits, you cut costs somewhereelse.
Jeff Byers (09:01):
Well, as reported by Axios, medical device makers and
hospitals were pressing to gainexemptions from the recently
announced tariffs. It looks likethis did not happen. So looking
at the healthcare focus andgiven what you just said,
generally, how may tariffs as aconcept affect healthcare?
David Simon (09:21):
So I think as you're saying, the big thing
here are the prices. And thoseprices, we think in the long
run, at least over time will bepassed down to consumers. And
and and I think a key thing toremember here is that even if
companies shift, to purchasingfrom US or from places with a
lower tariff, importing goodsfrom there or or or doing US
(09:43):
manufactured goods, the pricesstill go up. And that's because
these other companies, they havemore demand on them and limited
supply, limited resources toprovide, and that's gonna push
up the prices of the domesticproduced goods as well. The
other thing to really thinkabout, that I think there's
concerns are is that, when youthink about pharmaceuticals or
(10:05):
especially with medical devicemanufacturing, these have
extremely complicated supplychains.
I don't think we evennecessarily fully understand how
complicated these supply chainsare. And and some of these
inputs are done on very lowprofit margins. So so some of
these supply chain providers whoare making an input into the
(10:27):
device, which is also importedand might be two or three steps
down up on supply from where thedevice is manufactured. The
concern is that they could bepushed out of business. Their
profit margins can be very low.
And it can be sometimes the caseis there's just one or two of
these manufacturers who aremaking these devices. That can
(10:49):
really end up causing in thehealthcare sector and other
sectors as well, sharplimitations on supply backup. It
can disrupt the supply chainsimilar to what So there's a
great article by Ben Golub,who's a network economist who
talks more about this. He saidat the extreme end, it could be
as bad as the COVID disruptionsor even worse. So if you think
(11:11):
about some of the problems thatthe health care industry had in
COVID, if if these tariffs endup being long lasting and if
they end up being large, thenthen you could really put under
some producers and have supplychains start to back up.
Jeff Byers (11:25):
So Yeah. That would that seems to me like that would
be a very, very extreme casethough.
David Simon (11:29):
Yeah. I think yes. I think the issue is is that
these global markets have beenso integrated and are so complex
that no one really knows. Imean, I think Sure. Sure.
Someone's steering this or thatsomeone it is not the case. So I
think like a car manufacturerlike Toyota or something,
(11:49):
they've if if they look at thenumber of inputs that they're
bringing in from other places,you're talking about a couple
hundred thousand differentinputs from different places. So
that's the I was saying that Ithink that's what part of what
markets are are reacting to ishow this is.
Jeff Byers (12:04):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you think about,
like, from a hospitalperspective, there's so many
potential medical devices fromX-ray machines to CT scans to
stethoscope as medical device,but not exactly what we're
talking about here. But, youknow, those those kind of things
when you're talking about supplychain, there's, like, big ticket
devices or, pieces of equipmentitems as well as, yeah, just
(12:28):
like your day to day, like BandAids, swabs.
So there's a lot of potential tobe seen about like what how this
actually would shake out in aprovider setting. As we wrap up,
how could, and we kind oftouched on this already, but how
could healthcare spendingutilization change in the face
of these economic changes? Andwhat might you say is to I'll
(12:50):
just stop right there. In theface of these economic changes.
David Simon (12:53):
Yeah. I mean, I think the thing to to realize is
that this is done to reshor, andit's gonna be really slow and
expensive to reshor some ofthese producing these items that
like these medical devices.That's if it's even possible. It
might be that these globalsupplies are just too integrated
at this point. And so youbasically there's two things
that can happen.
(13:14):
You have and and I think it iswhat we talked about. Prices go
up and that ends up increasingcosts or there's shortages in
the intervening time.
Jeff Byers (13:22):
Do you think this is something that insurers want to
take note of before patients orpatients before insurers? Do you
have any insights onto that?
David Simon (13:32):
Yeah. I mean, you know, if it's a shortage, I
don't know if the insurer sure.You know, then in that case,
that kind of tempers down demandin a way that doesn't affect the
consumers. But to the degreethat this is just upping prices,
yeah. I mean, this is gonna beout of the pockets of insurers.
And so they if I were them, Iwould they need to start pricing
this in.
Jeff Byers (13:51):
I mean, it it will be, interesting to continue the
tracking of research on healthcare spending and, utilization,
going forward. David Simon, isthere anything we didn't talk
about that if you were in myshoes that I should have asked
you, you know, while we haveyou?
David Simon (14:09):
Let's see here. I think we got the major points
that I, you know, wanted tocover. Yeah. I think I think the
last thing to to know is thatthis is just really
unprecedented waters, both interms of the extent of the
tariffs and how they're beingdone. And that's what you're
really seeing markets react tois that we don't know.
(14:30):
We know it's gonna hurt, but wedon't we don't really know how
bad.
Jeff Byers (14:34):
Well, may you live in interesting times. I like
cold times. David Simon, thankyou for joining us on Health
Affairs this week. If you, thelistener, enjoyed, David's
insights and want to hear morefrom him, please sign up for
Health Affairs Insider, wherehe, writes our economic
intersections newsletter. And ifyou enjoyed this episode, this
(14:58):
free episode, pass it on to afriend, maybe the day trader in
your life, and we will see younext week.
Thanks all.
Hello and welcome to Health Affairs This Week. I'm
your host, Jeff Byers. Hello.Hello. We're recording on
04/10/2025.
Heads up. Health affairsreleased a theme issue on food,
nutrition, and health recently.I hope you are enjoying the
special series from mycolleagues, Ellen Bayer and
Jessica Bylander. The lastpodcast episode on that four
(01:00):
part series will be publishednext Wednesday. On April 29, we
have a related lunch and learnevent for the theme issue.
It's a conversation with MarionNestle discussing the evolution
of US food and nutrition policy.Check the show notes, to join
this free virtual event. Also,our next insider event is April
23 with Brady Post on-siteNeutral Payments, and we're
(01:23):
working on some events, thatwe'll be able to announce pretty
shortly. Today, I'm joined byDavid Simon. David is an
associate professor of economicsat the University of
Connecticut, and he is theauthor of the Health Affairs
Insider Newsletter EconomicIntersections.
In this exclusive premiumnewsletter that you can only get
(01:45):
when you sign up for HealthAffairs Insider, David explores
the intersection of economicsand health care. And with that
spirit in mind, today we aregoing to talk about tariffs.
David, welcome to the program.
David Simon (01:58):
Hi. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me on.
Jeff Byers (02:00):
Just real quick. Where are you in the in the NCAA
double a tournament? Are we donewith that? Let's do a sports
recap. Did did you all win?
David Simon (02:08):
I think we won. I'm not I'm not a sports person. So,
yeah, go Huskies. I believe wehad our big win and and, yeah,
won won won the national.
Jeff Byers (02:16):
To the task at hand, thanks for thanks for joining
SportsCast for a second there.On April 2, the Trump
administration unveiled a planfor reciprocal tariffs. So we
like to think that everyoneevery episode could be someone's
first episode with this. Maybethey're steeped in health
policy. Maybe they're not.
So for those that might beunaware, simply just going way
(02:40):
back, what is a tariff?
David Simon (02:41):
Yeah. All a tariff is is a is a special type of
tax. It's a tax on an importedgood. So whoever, exporting that
good from that country wouldwould would have to pay that
tax. So the what what we thinkof the actual incidence of the
tax, whether it gets passedthrough prices or not, is less
clear.
So
Jeff Byers (03:00):
And so we've probably heard the word tariff a
lot in the news recently. Fromyour perspective, what's the big
news from this? They called itLiberation Day. Is that right?
David Simon (03:08):
Yeah. So I think there were a couple of things
that with all the buildup thatreally jumped out on that day.
And so the first one was, howthe tariff was applied across
countries. Well, so first ofall, it was just more widespread
and larger than anyone expected,at least until the recent
turnaround. And then, associatedwith that, it is when we when we
(03:32):
think about this, it seemed likethe administration was taxing
based on the amount of the tradedeficit, which is not in fact a
reciprocal to the tariffs oreven to the non tariff trade
barriers that the othercountries were applying.
But it had more to do with whojust we tended to be run a
(03:53):
deficit with. And and I don'tthink that was expected, and
that's not typically how wethink about trade policy, and
that was probably the biggestsurprise. I would think the
other major big thing to comeout of this was how the bond
markets enter ended up reactingwhere we had a sell off of
bonds, and that was probably anunexpected consequence of this
(04:16):
as well that that I think endedup being quite important. So
those were the two big ones.
Jeff Byers (04:20):
Yeah. And so you you alluded to this. Again, we're
recording on April 10. Somarkets did drop in reaction,
but you mentioned a comeback.So, like, you know, can you give
us an an overlay of just, like,what's happened so far in the
markets?
David Simon (04:35):
Yesterday was it yesterday? Yes. It was just
yesterday. President Trump,announced a change to the tariff
policy, which was originally inthe sort of wide base deficit
based, tax, and he reduced it toa 10% tax on all countries
except for the, China, I think,was the main one, who he'd saw
as as having, responded withtheir own tariffs, which now has
(04:57):
a quite high tax. And that wasso I think that's now at, like,
120 or around there.
At first, we saw a relief in themarkets because I think it was
so broad based that that in ofitself seemed to have a lot of
disruptions. But then and sothere was a there was a spike
up, though now the market seemedto be trending back down. I
(05:18):
think as they start to price inwhat the effect of these tariffs
could be, how it might affectgrowth because the tariffs are
even without, even with thepullback, tariffs are quite high
still, especially on China.They're they're well above
anything we've seen in recenthistory.
Jeff Byers (05:33):
Yeah. So I don't wanna, start making predictions
about what's gonna happenbecause, a, we probably don't
really know what's gonna happen,and by the time this episode is
released tomorrow, informationmay have changed drastically. So
but based on that, as a concept,how do tariffs affect costs and
prices to both businessconsumers in The US?
David Simon (05:53):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So
conceptually, we think oftariffs, as I mentioned, was a
tax. And so one of the keythings that we care about the
tax would be what we whateconomists call the incidence of
the tax.
That's essentially which side ofthe market pays the tax. So in
the case of tariffs, that wouldbe two people effectively have
(06:15):
to pay for the tax. It's eitherthose who are buying, which
would be The US in this case, orthose who are producing the
goods and selling it, whichwould be, China or another
country who implemented thattariff. And if you look at the
recent sort of research on onChina and previous tariffs that
have been levied, recently byThe US, as well as just sort of
the general sort of what we seewith tariffs in general, that it
(06:37):
seems like most of get that getspassed on to the country that's
purchasing the good, so about a% pass through. So most of the
tax gets passed through.
Now it gets a little bit morecomplicated in that once you
have that, then The US companieswho are purchasing the goods can
choose to either they can eitherchoose to pay the tax. And so
this would maybe like a hospitalwho's importing a medical
(06:59):
device. They can eat it out oftheir profits or they can cut
back production or they can passdown the full amount of the tax
or some amount of the tax ontothe consumers or in this case,
people who are using hospitalservices in that example.
Jeff Byers (07:13):
So, you know, can you give me an example of what
we've seen in the past or, like,how how might that play out?
David Simon (07:18):
Yeah. Absolutely. So, the best research we have on
this recently would I think it'sa 2023 paper that looked at how
tariffs from the first Trumpadministration, where he he
implemented a number of tariffs,on China, how those ended up,
affecting, prices and and whopaid them. I think like like I
sort of alluded to, almost a %of the tariffs got passed on to
(07:43):
US companies. And then thequestion becomes how those
companies responded.
So depending on the industry,some of that money got passed on
directly to consumers. In somecases, lot of it. In other
cases, the companies paid it andthey can end up either eating
down of their profits orpossibly, and what we would
think in the longer term, thatwould be cutting back
(08:03):
production, maybe producing lessfiring workers and that kind of
thing.
Jeff Byers (08:07):
You know, looking back at that research, I want to
ask about the healthcareindustry portion of it. Was
there any information about howhealthcare companies responded?
David Simon (08:17):
They didn't specifically look at healthcare.
They did look at electronics,which is probably close to what
would matter for medicaldevices. I should say the the
other big one from China wouldbe pharmaceuticals, but those
have so far been exempt fromtariffs, even the recent ones.
But but if you look atelectronic devices, most of that
did not get passed through toconsumers, but got eaten by the
(08:40):
producers. And again, I don'tthink we know yet exactly how
they responded, whether that wasjust purely out of profits or
what you might think more of isthat's going to you know,
they're not gonna expand as muchor they might have to do layoffs
or something like that.
They have to cut costs somewhereelse. That's that's their
option. Right? You either payconsumers, you either out of
profits, you cut costs somewhereelse.
Jeff Byers (09:01):
Well, as reported by Axios, medical device makers and
hospitals were pressing to gainexemptions from the recently
announced tariffs. It looks likethis did not happen. So looking
at the healthcare focus andgiven what you just said,
generally, how may tariffs as aconcept affect healthcare?
David Simon (09:21):
So I think as you're saying, the big thing
here are the prices. And thoseprices, we think in the long
run, at least over time will bepassed down to consumers. And
and and I think a key thing toremember here is that even if
companies shift, to purchasingfrom US or from places with a
lower tariff, importing goodsfrom there or or or doing US
(09:43):
manufactured goods, the pricesstill go up. And that's because
these other companies, they havemore demand on them and limited
supply, limited resources toprovide, and that's gonna push
up the prices of the domesticproduced goods as well. The
other thing to really thinkabout, that I think there's
concerns are is that, when youthink about pharmaceuticals or
(10:05):
especially with medical devicemanufacturing, these have
extremely complicated supplychains.
I don't think we evennecessarily fully understand how
complicated these supply chainsare. And and some of these
inputs are done on very lowprofit margins. So so some of
these supply chain providers whoare making an input into the
(10:27):
device, which is also importedand might be two or three steps
down up on supply from where thedevice is manufactured. The
concern is that they could bepushed out of business. Their
profit margins can be very low.
And it can be sometimes the caseis there's just one or two of
these manufacturers who aremaking these devices. That can
(10:49):
really end up causing in thehealthcare sector and other
sectors as well, sharplimitations on supply backup. It
can disrupt the supply chainsimilar to what So there's a
great article by Ben Golub,who's a network economist who
talks more about this. He saidat the extreme end, it could be
as bad as the COVID disruptionsor even worse. So if you think
(11:11):
about some of the problems thatthe health care industry had in
COVID, if if these tariffs endup being long lasting and if
they end up being large, thenthen you could really put under
some producers and have supplychains start to back up.
Jeff Byers (11:25):
So Yeah. That would that seems to me like that would
be a very, very extreme casethough.
David Simon (11:29):
Yeah. I think yes. I think the issue is is that
these global markets have beenso integrated and are so complex
that no one really knows. Imean, I think Sure. Sure.
Someone's steering this or thatsomeone it is not the case. So I
think like a car manufacturerlike Toyota or something,
(11:49):
they've if if they look at thenumber of inputs that they're
bringing in from other places,you're talking about a couple
hundred thousand differentinputs from different places. So
that's the I was saying that Ithink that's what part of what
markets are are reacting to ishow this is.
Jeff Byers (12:04):
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Because when you think about,
like, from a hospitalperspective, there's so many
potential medical devices fromX-ray machines to CT scans to
stethoscope as medical device,but not exactly what we're
talking about here. But, youknow, those those kind of things
when you're talking about supplychain, there's, like, big ticket
devices or, pieces of equipmentitems as well as, yeah, just
(12:28):
like your day to day, like BandAids, swabs.
So there's a lot of potential tobe seen about like what how this
actually would shake out in aprovider setting. As we wrap up,
how could, and we kind oftouched on this already, but how
could healthcare spendingutilization change in the face
of these economic changes? Andwhat might you say is to I'll
(12:50):
just stop right there. In theface of these economic changes.
David Simon (12:53):
Yeah. I mean, I think the thing to to realize is
that this is done to reshor, andit's gonna be really slow and
expensive to reshor some ofthese producing these items that
like these medical devices.That's if it's even possible. It
might be that these globalsupplies are just too integrated
at this point. And so youbasically there's two things
that can happen.
(13:14):
You have and and I think it iswhat we talked about. Prices go
up and that ends up increasingcosts or there's shortages in
the intervening time.
Jeff Byers (13:22):
Do you think this is something that insurers want to
take note of before patients orpatients before insurers? Do you
have any insights onto that?
David Simon (13:32):
Yeah. I mean, you know, if it's a shortage, I
don't know if the insurer sure.You know, then in that case,
that kind of tempers down demandin a way that doesn't affect the
consumers. But to the degreethat this is just upping prices,
yeah. I mean, this is gonna beout of the pockets of insurers.
And so they if I were them, Iwould they need to start pricing
this in.
Jeff Byers (13:51):
I mean, it it will be, interesting to continue the
tracking of research on healthcare spending and, utilization,
going forward. David Simon, isthere anything we didn't talk
about that if you were in myshoes that I should have asked
you, you know, while we haveyou?
David Simon (14:09):
Let's see here. I think we got the major points
that I, you know, wanted tocover. Yeah. I think I think the
last thing to to know is thatthis is just really
unprecedented waters, both interms of the extent of the
tariffs and how they're beingdone. And that's what you're
really seeing markets react tois that we don't know.
(14:30):
We know it's gonna hurt, but wedon't we don't really know how
bad.
Jeff Byers (14:34):
Well, may you live in interesting times. I like
cold times. David Simon, thankyou for joining us on Health
Affairs this week. If you, thelistener, enjoyed, David's
insights and want to hear morefrom him, please sign up for
Health Affairs Insider, wherehe, writes our economic
intersections newsletter. And ifyou enjoyed this episode, this
(14:58):
free episode, pass it on to afriend, maybe the day trader in
your life, and we will see younext week.
Thanks all.
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