Kansas Health

[John C. Goodman, "Rationing U.S. Health?" American Conservative Union Foundation, June 26, 2006.]

It's easy enough to say that in an ideal situation everyone would have everything they wanted all of the time, but when it comes down to it there aren't many who are interested in footing the bill for such an undertaking. Even if someone wanted to, economics teaches us that there is a scarcity of resources and we must decide between competing goods. Utopian schemes end in disaster because they choose to ignore this fundamental truth.

The Citizens' Health Care Working Group, a 15-member panel created by Congress to survey the American public on what type of health care system is desired, recently released a 12-page report that is an excellent example of such a disconnect with reality. The first two sentences of a recent USA Today article on the report's release underscore the importance of recognizing the difference between stated and revealed preferences:

Affordable health care should be available to all Americans by 2012, with protection in the meantime from "very high out-of-pocket medical costs," say initial recommendations from a 15-member panel created by Congress.

The Citizens' Health Care Working Group's 12-page report, which some say may prompt debate before national elections in November and in 2008, does not specify exactly how to pay for such benefits or what they should include.

NCPA President John Goodman finds the report's recommendations disturbingly familiar:

There is not the slightest hint that anyone, anywhere will ever have to choose between health care and other goods and services. In fact, this group wants to make it a matter of law that there will be no hard choices, no difficult trade-offs, no cost-benefit analysis. (Thus, cutting through the Gordian Knot that has stumped so many other scholars.)

The document comes dangerously close to plagiarizing Aneurin Bevan and Sir William Beveridge, who said almost identical things more than 60 years ago - right before they established a system that did the exact opposite of every thing that was promised and has been rationing British health care ever since.

[Charles W. Van Way, III, MD, "The Strength of a Really Bad Idea," The Flint Hills Center, 8 May 2004.]