TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Friday, September 28, 2012

Government Control of Medicine Necessitates Rationing

Posted by Ari Armstrong at 6:25 pm ET

It would be shocking if it weren’t so predictable.

Steven Rattner, who once advised the Obama administration, begins his recent New York Times op-ed as follows:

We need death panels.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently—rationing, by its proper name—the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

Rationing is inherent in government control of medicine. When government provides “free” (or subsidized) health services, politicians and bureaucrats necessarily decide how that spending will be allocated. And, to the degree that the related taxes and controls drive out private health providers and disable individuals from affording their own health care, government rationing restricts the health services that individuals may use.

Paul Hsieh, a radiologist, discusses the obvious problems of government bureaucrats deciding who should get health services:

[A] physician on the ground doesn’t always know if a patient will live or die from a surgery or procedure. Should the government be deciding whether or not to try and save a patient’s life?

These sorts of arguments are inevitable when the government controls medical spending, as it does for the Medicare population. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Under ObamaCare, such government control will quickly spread to the vast majority of the American population, not just the elderly.

The economic facts of the matter are simple. Even the left understands them. And we have been warned.

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Image: Wikimedia Commons

Posted in: Health Care

Comments are welcome so long as they are civil.
  • Anonymous

    What about medical centers set up in other countries and designed from the ground up to serve American patients? I’d think Mexico, for example, would love to have such medical tourest business. Some serious con’s, but still some pro’s for some people.

  • http://twitter.com/NorthernWinds1 P Owen

    I’d say SAVE SAVE your $,but the medical cost is skyrocketing ! NO answers