Who’s Rationing Healthcare?
Ezra Klein pens an interesting piece in today’s Washington Post in which he compares and contrasts Obama’s healthcare proposals with those of Bill Clinton in the 1990’s. One of Kleins claims jumped off the screen at me:
But then a funny thing happened: Managed care came anyway. By last year, only 7 percent of American workers were in “traditional” indemnity health plans, while the rest of us—or at least those of us fortunate enough to have insurance—were swimming in the alphabet soup of HMOs and PPOs and HDHPs.
A common objection to public healthcare is the creation of and intrusion by a bureaucracy into an individual’s plan of care. Why should the government tell me and my doctor what type of care is appropriate? If Klein’s 7% figure is accurate or even in the ballpark, then why would it be better for me to have my healthcare rationed by insurance companies rather than the government?
