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Rationing No! but Yes to "comparative effectiveness" in government Healthcare

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DD5 Posted: Wed, Mar 24 2010 5:07 PM

Don't you love it how Statists all of a sudden acknowledge scarcity only after they take over.

From CNN: Answers To Your Questions on Healthcare


Question: Is there anything in the bill about rationing health care?

Answer: No one is using the term "rationing" as part of the bill. But there is a term called comparative effectiveness. And that's this idea that we figure out what works in medicine and make sure to pay for those things. This also means that there are a lot of things being done right now where there's not scientific proof that it works and maybe those things won't get paid any more. Some people call that rationing. Other people say, look, rationing exists under the current system. It's just that the insurance companies are essentially rationing by denying payment or dropping people off their coverage.

 

If anybody wants to take a crack at debunking this "answer", go right ahead.

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fakename replied on Wed, Mar 24 2010 6:34 PM

Rationing under a (relatively) free market is a lot different than one with more state intervention. In the former, there are actually incentives to improve quality and quantity in the other the incentives lead to an opposing outcome. 

In any case, what's in a name? If rationing is just comparative effectiveness then I guess comparative effectiveness is rationing -I'm sure leibniz had something to say about this.

In the last analysis too, I noticed things without scientific proof won't be funded anymore. Scientific proof itself wasn't always considered scientific and was outlawed for a long time and now we humans are going to just say "after 10,000 years of mistakes we're finally confident enough to say 'we have objective truth' and that anything which is not consonant with this will be outlawed"?  This constitutes a rebellion against human reason, and nature!

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