Misleading pro-reform claims on "rationing"

It's good to see Politifact debunking the claim by Howard Dean that "[t]here's no rationing in any of these [health care] bills" in Congress -- a statement that suggests the plans would prevent or end rationing. It's a misleading tactic that has also been used by the Obama administration recently on its Health Insurance Reform Reality Check website, which asserts that "Reform will stop 'rationing' -- not increase it." However, as I previously pointed out, the reality is that rationing is inherent to health care provision; all public and private health care systems do it now and will continue to do so regardless of whether reform is passed. We can argue about whether the health care system will ration care more (or less) efficiently or fairly under reform, but that's a different matter entirely.

Comments

[David]

I'm sure Brendan didn't mean to pre-judge that Health Care Reform would either improve efficiency and fairness, or, at worst, lead to no change. It's
a quibble, but Brendan might have made the downside risks more clear by writing something like, "One can argue about whether reform will make the health care system more or less efficient and whether it will be more or less fair."

[bnyhan]

That's why I meant; just clarified above.