Quantum Windbag
Gold Member
- May 9, 2010
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Let's try this again.
Is rationing Medicare inevitable? Who do we want making those decisions?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...011/06/03/AGy7l7HH_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein
Is rationing Medicare inevitable? Who do we want making those decisions?
The issue raises big questions about the best way to convince insured Americans to cut back on unnecessary health expenses without forgoing vital treatment. Government cost-cutting provisions like the new Independent Medicare Advisory Board have raised concerns that bureaucrats will end up "rationing" care. But the reality is that someone is going to have to say "no" to excess spending at some point, as I've explained previously. "Rationing is going to go on within the Medicare system. It's a fact of life. The question's going to be, is that decision going to be made by government and imposed top down under the current system?" the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner told Politico last month. As Tanner points out, Paul Ryan's Medicare plan intends to empower individuals to make such decisions, giving them a subsidy to purchase insurance on their own rather than having the federal government cover all their expenses. But as the recession may show, if individuals have less to work with up front, they could end up "self-rationing" and forgoing important treatment due to financial hardship or poorly informed decisions.
"You want to be changing habits in a good way. A lot of care was not terribly necessary, but you really want to make sure that people are still getting appropriate care," Kate Sullivan Hare, a long-time health policy observer, tells me in an interview. "Is it 'self-rationing' or rational care?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...011/06/03/AGy7l7HH_blog.html?wprss=ezra-klein