Rationing and Rationality

In an article entitled “Rationing and Rationality”, the editorial staff of the National Review Online makes (what I think is) a profound observation concerning the nature of health care rationing:

“The view that medical care should be withheld from people based not merely on the likelihood of success or the cost but on judgments about the quality of their lives is no longer held only by a fringe. Practices that are at best close cousins to euthanasia have become widespread.”

Assorted Links (8/17/2009)

Here’s a list of articles that I have been reading today (organized by topic):

Economics

Health Care Reform

  • We Don’t Spend Enough on Health Care, by Craig Karpel
    WSJ: “It’s crazy to adopt a bean-counting mentality amid revolutionary, albeit expensive, advances in medicine.”
  • How American Health Care Killed My Father, by David Goldhill
    The Atlantic: “After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.”

Public Policy

  • Why Government Can’t Run a Business, by John Steele Gordon
    WSJ: “Politicians need headlines. Executives need profits.”