Worried about healthcare rationing?

We should be; it's already here.

That's why 15% of our population cannot afford health insurance.

That's why:

• ;24 percent of Americans reported that they did not get medical care because of cost.
• Twenty-six percent said they didn't fill a prescription.
• 22 percent said they didn't get a test or treatment.

That's according to a study in 2001 by Health Affairs.

We ration healthcare based on the ability of patients to pay. We ration healthcare based on...money. Not need.

As David Leonhardt wrote way back in June:

The argument over rationing is between rationing well and rationing badly. Given that the United States devotes far more of its economy to health care than other rich countries, and gets worse results by many measures, it’s hard to argue that we are now rationing very rationally.

It is astonishing that another constituent group is being fed, and fed successfully, the ; claim that free-markets behave rationally and thus ration their products and services well, on their own, with invisible hands and no need for visible hands of regulatory hand-holding. I thought the recent meltdown of our unregulated financial markets would have freed everyone in this country of that illusion. It's even more astonishing when so ; much data shows our free-market healthcare system in reality, in performance and results, is more like an oligopoly than a free-market system rationally assigning its assets to meet the needs of the market.

I do credit the healthcare industry for its ability to ration its PR and lobbying resources effectively to counter any encroachment of competitive alternatives. They, or their minions of lobbyists and pr agencies, have successfully sold the lie that a free-market system is comprised of one provider in each state being authorized to offer its services. And these single providers are networked into national brands whose stock is traded on the national markets. Beautiful.

Links:

Washington Monthly: Rationing
David Leonhardt: ; Healthcare Rationing Rhetoric Overlooks Reality.
Ezra Klein: A rational look at rationing
Ezra Klein: We ration. We ration. We ration.

Comments

[Jeff Garrison]

For those that argue the free market is always best, I ask how they would feel about a completely private military to defend our country or a private police or fire department system to provide for our safety or a free market system for restaurant health inspections. No doubt there are problems such as inneficiency and corruption with all these things, but the idea of relying on "rent a soldier" or "rent a cop" for our national defense or security at the local level seems absurd.