Bureaucratific

In what passes for conservatism these days, criticism of Obama's health-care plan has seemed to mainly be, "We don't want someone else, least of all, one of them Washington bureaucrats, making our life-or-death decisions for us." As if private insurance bureaucrats were somehow more compassionate than their lowly government counterparts. The "death panels" hysteria is comical given that insurance companies lay out in advance exactly what procedures they will or, more likely, won't, cover and at what price limits. Nevertheless, this ought to be entirely beside the point.

Today, since you can get as much care as you can afford, we don't think of it as rationing, but from a societal standpoint, it absolutely is. Health-care is rationed according to one's ability to pay. Basic economics. So long as resources are limited, no one can get everything. Things get costs assigned to them based on how much people need/want them. The left is being entirely consistent, and noble, in arguing that it is immoral to deny anyone care just because they can't afford it. I fully stand behind that sentiment. However, we still won't be able to afford unlimited care for everybody. We never will as long as resources are finite. The real question is which system best rations health-care while covering as many people as possible, not whether we need to ration. We already do. The fact that the right is babbling about the greater compassion of private insurance companies is mind-boggling.