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There has been a lot of talk the past few weeks about the false possibility of health care rationing in the current storm of discussions surrounding President Obama’s health care reform plan, as well as options put forth by Congressional Democrats such as Senator Max Baucus.
While rationing may be a popular topic – particularly among the conservative and right leaning blogosphere, it is, at its core, a health care myth. Unlike the health care debate in 1994, where Harry and Louise were lamenting government rationing on behalf of the insurance companies, rationing has no place in current health care reform bills.
According to the American Medical Association, “The health reform plans being debated in Congress ensure that health care decisions will be made by you and your doctor – no one else.” Leading newspapers such as The Washington Post and USA Today are also working to dispel the rationing myth by dissecting the issue at the ground level and discussing how health care reform will prevent rationing – not lead to it.
Health Action Now! AARP’s health care reform campaign specifically states “Health reform isn’t about rationing; it’s about giving people the peace of mind of knowing that they will be able to keep their doctors and that they will always have a choice of affordable health plans.”
Jumping on the myth bandwagon doesn’t help anyone decide if they should support or oppose current health care reform bills. What it does do is encourage false information, fruitless discussions, and, overall, more confusion on what is already a confusing topic. This nation has grown up using debate and democracy as cornerstones for “getting the job done” but with people slinging mud – from both sides of the political spectrum – and creating chatter that isn’t true, it only threatens to take us further away from our goal of affordable, quality care for all Americans.
3 Comments
I find the debate about rationing of health care in the US bizarre, maybe because I am familiar with international data. The US ranks 18 out the 19 high income countries with recent data on number of doctor visits per capita per year. Only Sweden has a smaller rate of doctor visits. A smaller proportion of people in the US can see a primary care doctor on the same day as in Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries.
Through high prices and US-style gate keeping (which has devolved into keeping people away from any health professional at all other than some phone consultant -who may not even be a health professional), the US rations care at the primary care end far more than most supposedly rationed and supposedly government run systems in most other high income countries.
And we have people saying that the cure for US health problems is more of the same that has not worked for 20 years: make people pay all costs for any access up to some fairly big chunk of their income. Those are the proposed catastrophic high deductable policies that are being proposed by conservatives and some well meaning but I do not think very well informed liberals such as Brad DeLong.
From my point of view the debate in the US is just insane, and divorced from what we know about the reality of cost-effective health care in high income countries. I am glad some high profile organizations are talking sense on this topic.
Rationing is having insurance that won’t pay, not having insurance, or not being able to get care trough a Government program. We have rationing, will always have rationing. Correcting it will be never done unless we change Governemnts or countries.
There is more serious rationing being planned if there are a large number of people with AH1N1.
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“Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases.
The plan, which would guide Florida hospitals on how to ration scarce medical care during a severe flu outbreak, also calls for doctors to remove patients with a poor prognosis from ventilators to treat those with better chances of survival. That decision would be made by each hospital. ”
http://www.propublica.org/feature/in-flu-pandemic-states-hospitals-may-exclude-certain-patients-1016