{"id":3739,"date":"2009-08-12T13:28:51","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T18:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3739"},"modified":"2009-08-12T13:28:51","modified_gmt":"2009-08-12T18:28:51","slug":"the-right-wing-canard-of-rationing-and-health-care-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=3739","title":{"rendered":"The Right-Wing Canard of ‘Rationing’ and Health Care Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across this post by John Holbo at Crooked Timber<\/a> somewhere in my web travels yesterday. (My guess is a Yglesias tweet. Because later, I came across it again on Yglesias’s blog.) Holbo makes a few good points about the use of the term “rationing” by opponents of health care reform:<\/p>\n

\n

Guaranteed minimum healthcare doesn\u2019t forbid anyone to seek more on the private market \u2013 paying out of pocket, extra insurance. No more so than a guaranteed minimum income would forbid you to get a job to earn more than the minimum. So guaranteed minimal healthcare doesn\u2019t ensure its minimum by positively forbidding anyone to get more. So it isn\u2019t really rationing…\u00a0There just isn\u2019t going to be any attempt by the government to ration\u00a0healthcare<\/em>, as opposed to its own spending of taxpayer money. Because: why would there be?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yglesias seconds this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

[C]onservative appear to have concocted a special one-off meaning of the term \u201crationing\u201d to apply to government guarantees of basic health insurance coverage. They observe that insofar as the government guarantees basic health insurance coverage to everyone, the government probably can\u2019t actually deliver an\u00a0unlimited<\/em> quantity of health care services without breaking the bank. Therefore, at some point someone will probably not get some service he or she might [want]. This is rationing and it\u2019s evil and the solution, for unclear reasons, is for the government to deliver\u00a0no guaranteed services whatsoever<\/em> since . . . well . . it\u2019s not clear how that\u2019s better since either way you could still pay out of pocket.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across this post by John Holbo at Crooked Timber somewhere in my web travels yesterday. (My guess is a Yglesias tweet. Because later, I came across it again on Yglesias’s blog.) Holbo makes a few good points about the use of the term “rationing” by opponents of health care reform: Guaranteed minimum healthcare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1023,4,458],"tags":[2181,2180,782,1211],"class_list":["post-3739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-care-domestic-issues","category-politics","category-the-opinionsphere","tag-crooked-timber","tag-john-holbo","tag-matt-yglesias","tag-megan-mccardle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-Yj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3739"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3761,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3739\/revisions\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}