A Stitch in Haste

Can't quite fit this on Twitter:
I'm sure opponents will dust off the same old slogans they have used to try to block every major advance in health care. They will call it "socialized medicine" and a "government takeover," just as they did when they opposed Medicare and the children's health program — and they are [...]

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I was all set to cite this New York Times article on violation rates in nursing homes simply in a "Questions" entry: Shouldn't a supposed "right to health care" include a right to violation-free nursing home care? Etc.
But I'm changing tack after having read the whole piece:
More than 90 percent of nursing homes were cited [...]

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To review: Health care, however defined, is a scarce good like any other good or service. And like any other scarce good or service, it must be rationed. The only question is how it will be rationed — by private market forces (perhaps bounded by a minimal, humane social safety net for the truly incompetent) [...]

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A federal district judge has ruled that New York State's Medicaid program may deny a certain indigent person a certain operation because the state has a legitimate interest in "conserving limited medical resources."
As I have said ad nauseum: the notion that an economy can provide all the health care that everyone needs or wants is [...]

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In yesterday's New York Times, Paul Krugman does what he does best:

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You know the standard libertarian anti-conscription talking point about how the reason societies are so willing to engage in it is because of age-based majoritarianism (i.e., older people who would not be drafted outnumber younger people who would be drafted)?
Scratch that one off the list:
Want to do something truly patriotic to help preserve the American [...]

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Tyler Cowen has a follow-up on means testing generally (see my earlier post on his call for means testing of Medicare specifically):
Hardly anyone wants to endorse means-testing but almost everyone is for it. Of course Medicaid, food stamps, HUD housing assistance, and many other programs are already means-tested.
Perhaps, but many government programs that should be [...]

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To review: Health care, like any other good or service, is scarce and must therefore be rationed. The only question is how it will be rationed: by private market forces as determined by patients, physicians (and, yes, insurance companies) — or by politicians and bureaucrats.
The inability to see this simple economic truth — that we [...]

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Behold the latest example of the "universal right to health care" —
Barrie Clark, 61, was told in May that he could receive a free supply of a new kidney cancer drug on compassionate grounds from the pharmaceuticals company that makes it.
Clark was then astonished to be told by the NHS that he could [...]

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For those who were righteously indignant after reading my recent post about an incident involving some California educrats and law enforcement officials maliciously tormenting students by falsely informing them that their classmates had been killed in DUI accidents ("we want them to be traumatized"), may I offer you a denouement?
An unsuspecting mother was accused by [...]

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