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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (15859)	4/1/2010 8:19:25 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

You couldn't legally buy many things without the ration coupons, or sell to someone who didn't have them. Maybe we're talking about two different things. Your originally wrote: "I'm against rationing in the sense of direct explicit government controls over what can be had or what can be spent" I took that to mean the government disallowing private commerce like they have in Britain, for example, where procedures not covered by the NHS could not legally be performed between a willing provider and a patient using his own money. Which is not the same thing as ration coupons. It never occurred to me that a government with some kind of single-payer system would issue ration coupons for procedures it did not cover so that patients using their own money could get them but only in limited quantities. That's certainly something I didn't anticipate. The only reason for issuing ration coupons for the private economy would be when there's a national shortage. So are you anticipating a national shortage of some procedures or maybe providers such that the private acquisition of them would need to be rationed? Maybe a shortage of primary care doctors that would limit patients for seeking their services on their own dime to some rationed number of visits? I suppose that's theoretically possible, not that I think about it. I suppose it could be so difficult to get an appointment under some government or private coverage that people would offer cash incentives to get an appointment. Is that what you had in mind?