I don’t often weigh into health care issues on this blog because I don’t understand the subject well enough. Sometimes I get the sense that bloggers who do write frequently on the subject also don’t understand it well enough to offer any real informed commentary. As a test case I sent the following paragraph from this post by the American Prospect‘s self-styled health care guru Ezra Klein to a genuine health care expert (this one over the age of 25) who prefers to remain anonymous. Klein’s overall post is an attack on GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, who Klein says is embracing “health care rationing” in order to bring down costs:
So how does Ryan control costs? Well, pretty much the same way. He turns Medicare into a voucher program where seniors “will receive a premium support payment equal to 100 percent of the Medicare benefit.” Currently, Medicare’s costs rise as the demand, and price, of care rises. No rationing. Under Ryan’s proposal, its costs will rise by whatever the federal government says its costs will rise by. The question will simply be how quickly the subsidy grows. And if subsidy growth slows, we’ll have…Rationing! It will take the form of individuals being unable to pay for treatments rather than the government making people wait for treatments, but it’ll largely be the same thing. And it’s nearly the exact same mechanism.
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