Remember the joke about the man who asks a woman if she would have sex with him for a million dollars? She reflects for a few moments and then answers that she would. “So,” he says, “would you have sex with me for $50?” Indignantly, she exclaims, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He replies: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re just haggling about the price.” The man’s response implies that if a woman will sell herself at any price, she is a prostitute. The way we regard rationing in health care seems to rest on a similar assumption, that it’s immoral to apply monetary considerations to saving lives — but is that stance tenable?
A brilliant article on the basic economics of scarcity, with a focus on the current health care debate.
Cheap Talk 
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July 16, 2009 at 10:11 am
Anshu
Indeed an interesting article, and I completely understand the point about rationing. However I think the author misses some key points. Anecdotal stories from Canada are so compelling because, as the author later acknowledges, the lack of a private option is the real issue. We simply don’t have any choice here in Canada, and must wait for our overlords to tell us what services we can, or can’t get, for any illness. And many provincial governments actively block or limit private options.
If I could buy private insurance more easily, and have easier access to private treatment options for illnesses, then at least I could make a risk/value assessment for myself. In Canada today, I have no such practical option. So when faced with a serious illness not covered by Canadian healthcare, many Canadians have only one choice – travel outside of Canada and pay the full cost (with no insurance to offset this) for treatment.
The last point of the article is also flawed. The author points to the high rate of reported satisfaction among Canadians and Brits regarding their healthcare. The simple truth is that most people are generally healthy, and have never been exposed to the effects of rationing and lack of choice in Canada. Once they have been, that answer usually changes.