Jul 17

I’ll Take What’s Behind Door #3, Monty

Policy doug bandow, healthcare reform, uwe reinhardt Comments Off

Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt makes a fair point to those slinging around the term “rationing,” in the context of healthcare reform, like it’s a dirty word: the free market is itself a form of rationing, inasmuch as healthcare is a scarce resource that is rationed by price.  I agree with Doug Bandow at Cato that the issue isn’t rationing per se, but liberty.  In a truly free market (which we presently do not have, because of the perverse incentives created by existing government regulation of healthcare), rationing decisions are the product of consumer choice based on individual and family circumstances and needs.  In a socialized healthcare system, rationing decisions are the product of arbitrary bureaucratic edict and political expediency.

But then Reinhardt says:

To suggest that the main goal of the health reform efforts is to cram rationing down the throat of hapless, nonelite Americans reflects either woeful ignorance or of utter cynicism. Take your pick.

One needn’t be an ignoramus or a cynic to note the observed propensity of most Democrats and many Republicans to exalt the power of the state at the expense of individual liberty, and conclude that the current healthcare reform efforts are more of the same.  On the contrary: given the extent to which voluptuaries of healthcare reform worship at the feet of Leviathan in virtually every other context, to suggest that the main goal of progressive health reform efforts is responsible fiscal stewardship and/or sheer civic-minded munificence reflects either stunning disingenuity or hilarious naiveté.