How do Americans ration health care?
It’s by cost, as well as the number of uninsured.
Ezra Klein actually has a pretty balanced take on health care rationing issue. He says that what’s happening Stateside is equally as dismal as the waiting times both in Canada and the UK, calling each system opposite ends of “awful extremes.”
The ACP’s Bob Doherty picks up on that, and agrees with the implication that other countries with public-private hybrid systems may be the way to go: “[The ACP] also found that the best performing systems could be found in countries like France and Germany that combined publicly-funded and guaranteed coverage with private coverage options.”
The op-ed also takes a shot at the Rupublican proposal of replacing Medicare with vouchers, and I agree that it’s unlikely to happen.
But it’s interesting to note that Ezekiel Emanuel, who’s the brother of Rahm Emanuel, and an advisor to the White House, endorses a voucher-based system to provide universal coverage, albeit to the non-Medicare population.
The concept isn’t as far-fetched as some progressives make it out to be.
Related posts:
- Rationing care is inevitable to control health care costs
- The deterioration of "free" care in Canada
- Women’s care in health care rationing countries
- Countries with worse health care systems than the United States
- Our broken health care system, should we start all over from scratch?
- ACP: Embracing a culture of cost-effective health care
- Is rationing health care impossible in the United States?
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So how do they do the mix? What does the govt. pay for vs. the private insurers? One of the complaints I’ve heard from a Canadian is that because it’s “free” people overuse the system. I don’t have any hard evidence on that, but I could see that happening.
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