Cosmetic Surgery Innovation

The average time price of 19 procedures has fallen by 50 percent since 1998.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that since 1998, the prices of hospital services have increased 61 percent faster than average wages and far outpaced CPI inflation. This industry is highly regulated and government restricts supply and subsidizes demand.

Would free markets help to reverse these cost trends? To answer this question we looked at the time prices of 19 common cosmetic surgery procedures. These procedures are elective and insurance companies typically don’t provide reimbursements. We also note that cosmetic surgeons have been relatively free to innovate and cosmetic surgery centers are globally competitive.

Prices for a variety of procedures are published annually by the American Academy of Plastic Surgeons. We compared the nominal prices from 1998 to 2022 against the average hourly wage rates of unskilled and blue-collar workers. This gave us relative time prices over time. The average time price fell by 50.3 percent over this 24-year period. For the time it took to earn the money to pay for one procedure in 1998, you now get over two. You can say that procedure abundance has increased by over 100 percent. The time price of chemical peels and laser hair removal fell the fastest by 87.7 percent and 80.1 percent respectively. Upper arm lifts actually increased by 6.7 percent while facelifts increased by 1.6 percent.

This analysis compares categories of wage earners over time, but what about individuals? We typically start as unskilled workers and them move up over time as we acquire more productive skills and knowledge and experience. Categories remain constant while individuals are upwardly mobile. If we look at an unskilled worker who “upskilled” to a blue-collar worker, cosmetic surgery procedures have become dramatically more abundant.

From 1998 to 2022 nominal unskilled hourly wages increased by 102.8 percent, while blue-collar hourly compensation increased by 91.2 percent. The average between these two categories was 94.7 percent. If you started out in 1998 as an unskilled worker and moved up to a blue-collar worker, your nominal hourly compensation, increased by 348.5 percent. Comparing an upskilling worker’s hourly compensation to the prices of cosmetic procedures indicates that the average time price fell by 78.4 percent. These workers would get 4.63 procedures in 2022 for the time price of one in 1998. Personal cosmetic surgery abundance increased by 363.5 percent for them, growing at a 6.6 percent compound annual rate, doubling every 11 years or so.

We describe the process of transforming scarcities into abundances in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. You can read more about the book at superabundance.com. There has never been a better time to create more life.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.