Krugman well describes the dilemna of publicly funded health care - it's not possible to pay for all the health care that could be purchased. Rationing is a requirement. The question he can't get to because of his ideology is: who should choose the rationing? He never asks this question, he just thinks government should ration and that's the end of it.
Here's a bit of Krugman's logic, if you want to call it that: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.
What has gone wrong with us?
Does he think all health care has nothing to do with patient choice? I think it is about 99% about choice, the exception being only care of those not conscious or rational enough to choose.
All of Krugman's complaints are ineluctible concerns resulting from government's intrusion into the health care process, but it sometimes seems as if he's never considered them before.
As the Cafe puts it:
If consumer choice isn’t the ultimate driver of health-care supply, however, what – or who – will be its ultimate driver? Health-care suppliers? Congress? Government bureaucrats? Princeton dons?
Admittedly, the politically engineered wedge separating the receipt of health-care services from the responsibility for paying for these services creates problems. But the best way to address these problems is to remove the wedge rather than to arrogantly suggest that some mysterious transcendent force will more reliably look after individuals’ health-care needs than will those individuals themselves as they operate in markets in which insurers and physicians must compete for consumer dollars.
Here's a bit of Krugman's logic, if you want to call it that: How did it become normal, or for that matter even acceptable, to refer to medical patients as “consumers”? The relationship between patient and doctor used to be considered something special, almost sacred. Now politicians and supposed reformers talk about the act of receiving care as if it were no different from a commercial transaction, like buying a car — and their only complaint is that it isn’t commercial enough.
What has gone wrong with us?
Does he think all health care has nothing to do with patient choice? I think it is about 99% about choice, the exception being only care of those not conscious or rational enough to choose.
All of Krugman's complaints are ineluctible concerns resulting from government's intrusion into the health care process, but it sometimes seems as if he's never considered them before.
As the Cafe puts it:
If consumer choice isn’t the ultimate driver of health-care supply, however, what – or who – will be its ultimate driver? Health-care suppliers? Congress? Government bureaucrats? Princeton dons?
Admittedly, the politically engineered wedge separating the receipt of health-care services from the responsibility for paying for these services creates problems. But the best way to address these problems is to remove the wedge rather than to arrogantly suggest that some mysterious transcendent force will more reliably look after individuals’ health-care needs than will those individuals themselves as they operate in markets in which insurers and physicians must compete for consumer dollars.
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