How We Ration Doctor Visits

Quote of the day:
“Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone.”
--Hodding Carter

India statistic of the day:
Expected population in 2050: 1.6 billion (surpassing China).
--Edward Luce, from "In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India."

More on Health Insurance and Iraq:
“By not taxing employer-paid insurance, the government now provides a huge invisible subsidy to workers. [Bush’s proposal] would not end the subsidy, but by modifying it with specific deductions for insurance, he would force most workers to see the costs.”
--Robert J Samuelson, in the January 29th Newsweek.

Samuelson makes an important point. Most of us who have health insurance may know only what our premiums are, what our copayments are, and what the limits of our coverage are. We don’t know the real cost of the care we receive.

The health care debate is all about costs. It’s all about money. For years, proposals for any kind of government-sponsored health care were derided as systems for “rationing” doctor visits. Critics pointed to inefficiencies and problems in systems such as Canada’s, suggesting that the last thing we needed was “rationing.”

Another Newsweek columnist, Anna Quindlen, made an excellent observation about this a few years ago. She pointed out that we already “ration” health care, but the rationing is invisible because it is based on money. Those who have money get health care, those who don’t do not, or are enormously inconvenienced.

To make good decisions about how to provide healthcare coverage to those who most need it, it is vital that we understand what the costs are. Then we can decide the best way to pay these costs.