Rationing. First of all, what does rationing mean?
It means that there is a finite or limited supply of a good or service, and that not everyone will get all of it that they want. Rationing can occur through the price that is charged for the good, or through limiting the quantity of the good by some centralized authority.
Yes, it is true that regardless of whether we get our health insurance from private insurers or from a government program, there is rationing. But there is a huge difference between the type and scope of rationing by the market through price, and rationing by the federal government through control. When the service is rationed by an insurance company, a doctor, or a hospital, if we don’t like the decision, we have a recourse. We have options. We have choices. We can go to a different doctor, a different insurer, a different plan; we can report the company, sue the company, fire the company.
When your health care is rationed by government-sponsored single-payer health insurance, that’s it. If you don’t like the rationing decision, you can’t get “another government,” you can’t sue the government, you can’t fire the government, you can’t pay a higher price to get more services out of the government (not legally anyway). You have no recourse. The government decision is the end of the road.
So rationing in and of itself is not the point, is not the problem. Government rationing is the problem.
By Sherry Jarrell
Learning from Dogs 