The Rationing Argument

One of the oft heard challenges to government run health care is that it will lead to rationing. I believe we on the right need to be more careful about the way we express this argument. The easy retort to this challenge is that rationing goes on right now, in that only the wealthy can afford health care (whatever wealthy may mean). The truth is that this retort is absolutely correct; arguing that government run health care will lead to rationing is a non-starter.

The fact is that any scarce resource must by definition be rationed
somehow — for that is the definition of a scarce resource. We can
engage in a lengthy debate about the definition of scarce versus
abundant (Is air a scarce resource? How about water?) But I think its
safe to say that health care is a scarce resource — there are only so
many doctors, and only so many machines, and the fact is that health
care costs money — certainly a scarce resource. So health care must
be rationed in some manner — the only question is how. And here we
reach the crux of the matter. We have before us two options for how
health care should be rationed:

a) Allow the free market to determine who receives health care
b) Allow government to determine who receives health care

The argument we should be making is not that rationing will occur, but
rather, which choice for rationing is superior. And for numerous
reasons, choice a) is by far a superior choice:

1) Allowing the free market to ration preserves liberty, as we, the
individuals citizens are in control of our health care. Allowing
government to ration decreases freedom and liberty, as an external
entity controls our health care decisions. The government will now
have the right to tell us what we can, and cannot eat, where we can
shop, how much exercise we must do; etc. Who wants less freedom and
liberty?

2) A corollary of point 1. Government control is prone to corruption.
If the government provides and controls the health care resources,
what is to stop a bureaucrat from providing the scarce health care
resources to favored parties? This can occur on a local as well as a
global level. On a local level: What if a government official has a
sick relative? Think that official might be tempted to skirt the
system and pull some strings to get treatment? Or on a global level:
think bureaucrats are above doling out extra health care favors to
areas where they need votes to stay in power? This type of patronage
goes ways back to the founding of our country, and is precisely one
the reasons too much power in the hands of government is dangerous and
precisely the reason the founding fathers saw fit to diffuse power as
much as possible even in government itself; no individual, or even
group of individuals should wield that much power over people’s lives.

3) Government, by its very nature is inefficient. What government run
program runs without waste? There is no accountability. The free
market imposes accountability in the form of profits, and thus strives
to eliminate waste and inefficiency. The results: free market rations
the resources in a much more efficient manner yielding more people
receiving health care, at a lower cost. In the end, more doctors, more
machines, more resources are available to treat people. This is simple
economics.
In short, if the goal is “universal access”, the free market can do a
better job of getting there. Of course, at this point, it should be
obvious that universal access is a utopia (which means “no place”,
look it up) — no scarce resource can truly be universal, by
definition. This is one area that the left seems to not understand,
the whole notion of a scarce resource. You can cannot provide
universal access to a scarce resource; you cannot provide everyone
with an infinite amount of something which by its very definition is
limited.

One other important point that needs to be argued is that we DO NOT
have a free market currently in health care. When presented with these
arguments, one may respond: “But we have a free market now, and look
at the results”. Number 1, the results are not nearly as bad as some
would have us believe, but more importantly, we do not have a free
market. It is a mishmash of government and free markets. This point
cannot be stressed enough.

I can understand the desire to express the argument as “Rationing will
occur with government control”; its a nice sound bite and has a
sinister tone to it. Explaining that rationing will occur in either
event, but one is better than the other does not sound as exciting.
But I believe we are doing a real disservice to our cause by
misstating the case in this manner. I believe we should instead focus
on the “Liberty” vs “Tyranny” theme when explaining our position; who
do we want to control our actions: us, or someone in Washington?

Yoel Spotts is a contributor to The Conservative Fun House Blog

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