Should American Healthcare Be Rationed?

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Michael Tanner said that compassion is a sentiment not a polocy.Well Michael,what is wrong with promoting compassionete polocy ? I suppose he is saying that taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for improved and or expanded acsess to healthcare for those that need it the most ? Personaly,I have a problem with forced taxation for any reason,but the issue of forced taxation is not what we are talking about here.Ceartainly if forced taxation is justifiable at all, then forced taxation for the purpose of providing healthcare to Americans would in my mind be the only just reason to forceably seperate people from their money.
Maybe I am wrong,but Michael seems to resent the fact that not all of the nations public funds are spent on defence and infrastructure.Michael,perhaps you should resent the fact this nation is in fact spending so much money on so called ''defence'',which is realy agression''that we are unable to provide viable healthcare to more of the people that need it the most ? I have a hunch that Michael,like so many of the CATO spokesmen,would like to see compassion rationend just as much as much as he would like to see healthcare rationed !
Conservitives just do not seem to understand that no monatary price can be attached to human life ! Neither do they seem to understand the fact that we should not allow market conditions to restrict our human potential.Just as people should not be made slaves by human law,we should not be enslaved by the so called laws of the market.Economic markets are after all man-made,thus the laws or should I say market forces are man-made.
It is true that we have a finite number of doctors,nurses,hospitals et.I can not help but wonder if we were to strip the AMA of its monopoly over medical liscening,if in fact we would find our selves with more doctors and other medical proffesionals.I also wonder why half of the 600 plus military bases around the world can not be shut down and the billions of dollars used to operate those bases be spent on expanded medical care ! Again the typical conservitive reaction to scarcity seems to be to take action to create even more scarcity ! We should when faced with a scarcity of a needed resource or service,find ways to over come that scarcity,not allow a few greedy individuals to profit from the creation of even more scarcity !
Indeed it is a very sad day when a nation as wealthy as ours even begins to entertain the notion of intentionaly rationing healthcare !

James of NC 2:13AM January 22, 2010

Page 21, I notice the subtitle here is VALUE OF LIFE NOT FOR OTHERS TO SET and I am well aware that Laura Hershey has strong feelings that no one should decide whether she should live or die except herself. But, if the "value of life is truly not for others to set" then why does the Catholic Church and other groups become so aggravated when those of us that would like to have the right to end our lives in a reasonably pleasant way do everything in their power to make sure we are not allowed to do so. And I put Laura Hershey right there with the Catholic Church.
As to rationing health care, of course it is going to be rationed. It already is rationed. There may not be a "rationing board" but procedures are rationed either by insurance companies, money, availability, etc.

Douglas T. Hawes of TX 12:20PM September 04, 2009

Mr. Andrew Baum of WI
I agree with you,
However Be careful you do not let a weak mind weaken yours. I traveled many years on freight trains and worked where ever I ended up and saw many ask for hand outs. There are many reasons why people end up the way they do. for one thing we take more drugs than we need.
read whats below this reply we need to work with each patient and sometimes there relatives who are not specialist but might help in giving the help the patient needs not what the patient wants
Health care has become drug care Doctors have become prescriber's, Its all about drugs nowadays not health. I have not been to A doctor for over three years and I hope it will be another 50 because when I go to the so called doctors I start having seizers and I do not like getting sick and have to pay to get sick.
I like obamas plan except I do not want to be forced to see what they are calling doctors nowadays. I would be better off seeing a witch doctor.
Our biggest problem health wise is no physical education in schools no large parks near residential areas and all our food has chemicals in them and our oceans are polluted.
Drugs from the greedy pharmaceutical companies are not the answer we have gotten fat and lazy because of TV's computers vehicles and automation. Do not get me wrong if it was not for the waist to bring up prices I would love automation But automation requires that we get our exercise elsewhere instead of at work. and the pharmaceutical companies wants to replace exercise with pills and A lot of people are falling for it.
Don D. Brock

Don D. Brock of AZ 4:07PM August 26, 2009

A health board? Who will sit on it? I think you can bet it will not be people with a deeply religious or pro-life worldview. It will be a secular humanist elite (I know the term is considered trite in many circles). How many devout Christians and Jews do you see in high political, government, business and academic positions, in relation to their demographic place in society? The health board will just be a tool to deny us kunckle-dragging "Bible-thumpers," "bead counters" and "beanie wearers" our healthcare preferences. I use these slurs advisedly, because I have been around Ivy-League people enough to know that's exactly how we are thought of by most of them.

Benevolus of WY 1:10PM August 26, 2009

Both commentators are right. The gentleman from CATO is quite correct that insurers and the government cannot possibly fund every possible treatment, without regard to cost or effectiveness, without raising premiums or taxes to intolerable, economy-wrecking levels. This will only become more true as people live longer and medical advances grow at a rapid pace. He is also correct that people should be able to spend as much or as little of their own money as they want, over and above any covered care. (And let's not assume without evidence that the rich will "unfairly" overspend, either. Both my father and uncle were wealthy, but when their time came they declined treatment that would only prolong death, not life. My dad didn't want to suffer unnecessarily, and my uncle wanted to preserve the assets he would pass on to his heirs. Both were Catholic, by the way.)
But the disability activist is equally correct that quality of life should play no part in an insurer's (government or private) decision to pay for care. Unless we are talking about a condition from which the patient cannot be expected to survive consciously for more than a week or so (at astronomical cost), or a permanent coma, only the patient (if competent) can decide when his or her quality of life has deteriorated to the point where further aggressive treatment is worthwhile. Otherwise, we will surely wind up euthanizing people with expensive conditions and people in the last year of their lives. That is simply unacceptable in a civilized nation.

Benevolus of WY 1:01PM August 26, 2009

I'm not in favor of rationing, but I used to work as a home health aide and I saw my clients squander so many medical resources and waste so much time chasing some magical cure for the symptoms of congenital birth defects that I've got to say, "Yeah, some limits are reasonable". Do you want to pay for somebody else's hypochondria?
I wrote a song about it. Wanna hear it? Here it goes.
One of my clients got a $15,000 baclofen pump after ten doctor's consultations. After the surgery she made an appointment every two weeks during which she would complain about it.
Wooo!
There was an appointment every few months to get it refilled. I would literally transport this same client to 2-3 doctor's appointments a week for nothing. She had 6 doctors.
Wooo!
She died a year later. I watched hundreds of thousands of dollars get flushed down the toilet this way.
Wooo-Hooo!
Didja like it? Like most truth, it's bitter.
One other thing. Don't let a disabled person put one over on you because of their condition. Some of them take advantage of their condition and nobody calls them on it because it's not politically correct, or they might get sued. Don't fall for it.

Andrew Baum of WI 4:14AM August 23, 2009

Of course, Healthcare is already rationed by the insurance companies. Americans healthcare is rationed with financial concerns for corporations right now - for the sake of profiteering off the sick and needy and its a major reason we need reform.
To even suggest that there is not rationing now with a misleading questions like this one is a intentional misrepresentation of the facts like just another anarchist tossing a bomb into the mix. There are no two sides to this coin and this leading question demonstrates either you're not paying attention or you're getting paid to bambozzle us with more misinformation. Leaving a open end to a already closed question gives room for the crazies to repeat their lies about death panels or cutting their medicare.
The discussion requires maturity on all sides and not more drivel impugning our intelligence.

PJ of MT 8:06PM August 17, 2009

One word. NEVER!

Gye Hobbs of OR 1:44PM August 15, 2009

SHOULD healthcare, in the US or anywhere for that matter, be rationed? No.
WILL it have to be? Yes. Because Mr. Tanner is correct: our resources are limited.
I personally do NOT want insurance companies making these decisions. The other side doesn't want the government making them. So what is left? A health board similar to the one in Britain that remains independent and is made up of experts in the fields of medicine, ethics, social services AND economics. It would also be nice if there were two places on this board held by people from the general public just to provide a voice for those who would feel that they don't otherwise have one.

MN of VA of VA 10:43PM August 13, 2009

I think somebody aught to slap that guy...you have to be kidding? What an idiotic thing to say in America. Its not a commodity! It is a function of education and providing people who need help with the results of that education. This moronic view of commoditising american freedoms is why this country is in such bad shape..you simply cannot trade the value of a human life like a commodity...
I hope I never meet a gentleman like this guy, I would be tempted to give him my own version of a commodity and that would be a punch in the mouth...
Any respect I might have had for the Cato institutes opinions just went out the window...geesh I am boiling...

Tom in San Diego of CA 4:07PM August 13, 2009