I recently returned from an excellent conference organized by the Nevada Policy Research Institute in Las Vegas. As you can see in the above photo, we had a good time (I’m the one in the middle — the Jewish guy).
At the conference it dawned on me that health care is likely to have a huge, unintended effect on education policy. By placing significant new health care costs on states, the bill will almost certainly strain state finances. Since education is the only other really big expenditure in state budgets, look for states to become much more open to ways to economize on education than they have been. State may become much more interested in virtual education, choice, and other lower cost ways of delivering education. The days of regular annual increases in education spending are over. Once that happens the political landscape will almost certainly change.
Patrick Gibbons, the smart and energetic organizer of the conference, has already blogged on my health care/education trade-off ideas on the NRPI blog.
This was my first time in Vegas, so I should make a quick observation about the place. I think Las Vegas could best be described as a giant vacuum cleaner that sucks money out of people’s wallets. The people are glad to have the money vacuumed; they aren’t being robbed. It’s just that everything about the place has been carefully designed to extract as much money as people will willingly part with. If you don’t like gambling, they have shows. If you don’t have shows, they have shopping. They have food, they have prostitution, they have booze, they have spas, they have luxurious accommodations. Whatever you want to spend money on, they will provide the service and take your money. It is the Platonic form of commerce.
I know a lot of people have negative judgements about Vegas, saying that people are exploited or manipulated to give up their money. That wasn’t my experience. People were thrilled to have their money taken and seemed to enjoy the process knowing full well what was happening.
My sense is that it is no more exploitative than the local shopping mall in every city. It is only far more efficient and on a larger scale.
Posted by Jay P. Greene 
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