As usual, both sides are determining the truth by their party affiliation rather than observing the truth and then finding the group that supports the position they support.
Sorry, folks, but reality does not give a flying fandango about your party label. Reality does not even care what your opinion is.
The simple fact is, and this is the thing that NOBODY wants to discuss is that ALL healthcare is rationed. ALL healthcare.
And just as with every other product, there are only two types of rationing that exist:
- price rationing
- bureaucratic rationing
That is it. There are no other types of rationing and there is no such thing as non-rationed healthcare. Go ahead, think about it for ten years. Google every source you can find, and in the end you will discover that healthcare is rationed and that price rationing and bureaucratic rationing are the only two methods available.
The question is, how do we want to ration healthcare?
If you say you want purely and solely price-rationing, are you prepared to let people who cannot afford to pay drop dead on the street?
Personally, I would be okay with this, because by one measure it is completely rational. I call this “Klingon Healthcare” to give it a name.
But practically speaking, very few people support this.
If you force hospitals to treat people at the emergency room, you have effectively broken the price system. So in this case, that is why we see the problems with healthcare that we do. That is a big part of the problem with healthcare in the United States today. We broke the price system (under Reagan) but we failed to institute any form or bureaucratic rationing. This is not the only problem with our healthcare system, but it is one of the three biggies.
Also, there is a gigantic problem with “fee for service.” Nobody goes to the hospital or clinic and says, “Gee, my neighbor Stan had a colonoscopy last month, and it was so effing cool. I gotta have one.” People get healthcare because they want to be healthy. Healthcare is not like other products. You do not want the product. You want an outcome. That makes a difference.
And thirdly, there is the problem of asymmetric information. Most customers are not in a position to make a truly informed choice. Not to mention the fact that providers are often arrogant and think they know everything. Not all of them, but a lot of medical professionals get angry when you question their judgment. I once called a physician a “gatekeeper,” and I thought he was going to blow his stack. It clearly angered him that I would dare to question his judgment. Why is that? Could it be due to the fact that if I refuse to undergo a service he doesn’t get paid? I am not saying that happens all the time, but to say that it never happens is just plain naïve. Do some people who sell stereos or microwaves sometimes use intimidation tactics? I am sure they do. But I am also sure they are a lot less effective than the intimidation tactics used by aggressive medical professionals.
But the reality is, none of you want to really have this discussion. You all would rather just thump your chests and scream, “ME IS RIGHT.”
That is why this country sucks these days.
