Health Care Rationing

There has been a lot of talk about health care rationing recently. And make no mistake, any government takeover of health care provision will mean rationing based on bureaucratic methods.

But it is important to note that rationing is happening now. Any honest witness to the current situation will observe that we currently ration by dollars. Those who can afford health care insurance get better and more care because they have earned that privilege.

Note too that there is rationing based on poorness and age. The very young are covered by WIC and the very poor are covered by Medicare.

One may argue that one type of rationing is more effective over the long-term than the other types. In point of fact I would argue exactly that. For example, it is true that the benefits that are only initially available to the very rich become accessible to the poor as well. MRIs were once without the reach of average citizens. The early funding for the expensive procedure allowed doctors to experiment with various methods of delivering the images. And through some trial and error (and economies of scale) the prices were brought down to reasonable levels so that nearly anybody can benefit from the procedure.

Another example is tits. (That's right, I said tits in my first substantive post on this blog.) The price of boob jobs has gone down substantially -- and the quality of results has improved significantly too -- because it is a competitive market. If new tits had stayed incredibly expensive the marketplace that discriminates (or rations) based on price would be very small. Indeed the number of 20-something tits on 40-something women would be vanishingly small to the detriment of people everywhere. But the marketplace delivered low price, high quality tits to everyone with a few grand available. Yeah, the marketplace. Yeah, tits!

But let's be clear. Price is the dominant mechanism for rationing right now. Youth, old age and poorness are also used but to lesser extents.

When the bureaucracy gets to make decisions about rationing the results will be worse for all, no doubt. But let's be clear on the language.