After Charles Krauthammer wrote of health care rationing as the inevitable result of reform, Ezra Klein responded thusly: “We ration. We ration. We ration. We ration.”
“Look at Canada,” says Charles Krauthammer. “Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.” So do we. This is not an arguable proposition. It is not a difference of opinion, or a conversation about semantics. We ration. We ration without discussion, remorse or concern. We ration health care the way we ration other goods: We make it too expensive for everyone to afford. (Emphasis mine)
Bailey scoffs at Klein’s understanding of the term “rationing,” then proceeds straight to Teh Stupid™:
Klein evidently thinks that market outcomes that he dislikes mean that government should step in and impose outcomes that he does like. All right, let’s admit it; the health insurance market and the rest of health care are royally screwed up as a result of decades of government interventions and mandates. Consequently we don’t actually find the usual benefits of falling prices and improving products and services that we experience in normally operating markets where robust competition and choice reign.
Bailey is wrong on all counts. First, “rationing” wasn’t invented in the age of statism; it’s as old as time, and older than government. It’s a communal survival mechanism. And it happens any time there’s a greater demand than there is a supply, a situation that also accelerates costs.
Second, he can’t refute Klein’s central argument that access to health care is limited, and doesn’t even try. Instead, he claims that government is the cause of health care cost inflation, a charge that doesn’t stand up to the logic test when the latest cancer treatment is a $100 million machine.
Last, Bailey makes a false assumption that health care follows the same economic models as, say, the auto industry. It doesn’t. No one makes care decisions the way they buy a car. As a single day on the road can tell you, people will drive anything — but will drive whatever car they can.
Patients, on the other hand, don’t pick their disease. Too often, Americans can’t afford the health care “car” they need — not even a Yugo.
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