Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing

The Stiletto Blog ^ | August 21, 2009 | The Stiletto

[theothercheek]

Americans who remember the 1973 and 1979 oil crises – being allowed to buy gas on alternate days, depending upon whether their license plate ended with an odd or even number, and waiting an hour or more in a line that stretched several blocks until getting to the pump – understand healthcare rationing all too well.

They also know that conservation and increased fuel efficiency did little to mitigate gas shortages in 2004 and 2008 – caused in part by government meddling in the free market - nor to slow down the rate of growth in the price of domestic crude oil, which has nearly doubled between 1973 and 2009 (and briefly quadrupled in 2008).

It’s not the U.S. Postal Service or its private competitors that President Barack Hussein Obama should be looking to when contemplating healthcare “reform,” but the oil industry.

Libertarian columnist John Stossel writes “Obama's nationalization scheme … is based on magical thinking that ignores the laws of supply and demand: “Medical care doesn't grow on trees. It must be produced by human and physical capital, and those resources are limited.”

Put another way: If you want to go to the top of the Empire State Building and there are 100 tourists ahead of you in line, you’ll get on one of the elevators to the 102nd Floor Observatory in a few minutes. If there are 5,000 tourists ahead of you, your wait will be several hours.

[NOTE: It is a copyright violation to copy-and-paste this entire post, so I put up only the introductory paragraphs.]

[PGalt]

Socialism/Collectivism always leads to killing innocent people.

[DieHard the Hunter]

It is much more likely to cause needs-based-Triage, alternative treatments and waiting lists than it is to cause rationing.

[DonaldC]

Like it’s not rationed now...sheesh

[theothercheek]

Yes, it is rationed by where the specialists practice vs. where you live and by your ability to pay the 20 percent cost for high-tech treatments your insurance doesn’t cover or the 100 percent of costs that your insurance won’t cover for treatments deemed (rightly or wrongly) “experimental.” But it’s not rationed by having to wait to see those specialists for months (you can always go to where they are) or by a high-tech treatment no longer being offered because the government won’t pay for it - and the few who can afford it won’t justify the cost of offering it. If we do nothing other than tighten regulations on the insurance industry so that they live up to their contractual obligations (don’t cut you off or jack up payments when you do get sick after a lifetime of paying premiums) then the healthcare “crisis” for 90 percent of Americans is solved.