"How many politicians, for example, would forthrightly and bluntly proclaim on the campaign trail that, to control the growth of health spending, they favor the rationing of health care by income class, that is, by price and ability to pay? Yet that is precisely what they and their advisors are advocating when they promote health-insurance policies with very high deductibles and coinsurance. As any well-trained economist knows and some good textbooks in economics are careful to point out, prices in a market economy are instruments to ration scarce resources among people. So a market economy in health care that relies on high deductibles and coinsurance is not an alternative to rationing. It is just one of several methods of rationing."  MORE >>