Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Immerman: Tech-impacted costs fall over time while housing and healthcare rise

Alex Immerman · Can AI Fix Housing and Healthcare Affordability? · Aug 21, 2025 · at 2:23

Alex Immerman, partner at a16z Growth, references Marc Andreessen's annual consumer price chart to explain why a16z invested in EliseAI.

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“If you look at housing and healthcare, as Mena just said, like prices just go up, up, up to the right and any industry that technology has touched has gone down.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Prices for housing and healthcare have consistently increased over time, whereas prices in industries touched by technology have decreased.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, housing and medical care prices have steadily increased over recent decades, with housing CPI rising by over 90% and medical care services rising significantly faster than baseline CPI. In contrast, BLS CPI series for technology-driven consumer goods, including televisions, personal computers, software, and audio/video equipment, show steep nominal price decreases over the same timeframe (e.g., televisions falling by 97%-99% and personal computers declining by over 90%). This directly validates the resolution criteria.

BLS CPI data shows nominal prices for housing rose over 90% between 2000 and 2026, and medical care service prices rose significantly faster than general CPI.
BLS CPI data confirms televisions dropped by 97%-99% and personal computers declined by over 90% between the late 1990s/2000 and 2026.
AEI's 'Chart of the Century' using BLS CPI data demonstrates a clear divergence where non-tradable/heavily regulated sectors (housing, healthcare) increased significantly while technology-driven goods registered sustained price drops.

Checked against

[1] ourworldindata.org [2] capitalogix.com [3] bls.gov [4] urban.org [5] humanprogress.org [6] humanprogress.org [7] bls.gov [8] healthsystemtracker.org

"Medical care" "Televisions" "Housing" CPI percentage change 2000 2025 BLS BLS CPI medical care shelter personal computers televisions price change over time Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index housing medical care televisions computers video games CPI price changes housing healthcare technology televisions software computers chart of the century AEI "Personal computers" CPI percentage change 1997 to 2024 BLS

assessed as of 2026-07-28

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Mentioned

housing and healthcare technology

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