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closeThe words “health care rationing” popped into my mind Wednesday after I read a Tribune headline that said, “Specialty health care funds cut.”
The sub-headline said, “Patients will no longer get direct access to neurology, orthopedics, cardiology and podiatry services.”
I don’t know what “direct access” means, but I’m pretty sure low-income people will now get less medical care.
The more I thought of it, the more I realized this isn’t rationing. To reduce health care for low-income people is the opposite of rationing.
I remember real rationing during World War II. Under it, rich or poor, we all got the same amount of gasoline, food, clothing and other necessities.
Yes, you could get more or less gas depending on how necessary to the war effort your travel was. And sure, there was some black-market cheating. But generally it was share-and-share-alike regardless of your wealth. Rationing also helped hold prices down.
That rationing was the opposite of how we allot health care today. Today, low-income sick people have fewer and fewer places to seek treatment. People with money or high-quality insurance can buy whatever treatments and tests they need (or don’t need) while pushing medical costs ever higher.
Our county once owned a General Hospital that would treat needy people. Its expenses grew steadily, so the county replaced it with clinics.
Since 2004 the county has been paying a nonprofit organization to provide the clinics.
Tuesday the cash-strapped county supervisors cut $1.4 million from the county’s expenditure for the clinics, thus diminishing low-income health care.
When I confront a difficult problem like this I usually take a nap, so I did; and I dreamed that I lived in a country with real health care rationing.
Every baby there received, at birth, his or her lifetime supply of medical ration coupons, but they were usually all gone by age 50. That led to bitter unrest so I moved my dream to a neighboring country.
The government there provided health care the same way it provided fire-protection. It charged everybody for health care whether they got sick or not, just as it charged them for fire-protection whether they had fires or not. The government also provided and equipped hospitals, just as it provided and equipped fire stations.
The doctors got a salary, regardless of how many people they treated, just as firefighters got a salary regardless of how many fires they fought.
The doctors fought illness for the same reason the firefighters fought fire — the pride and satisfaction of providing a vital service.
I woke up feeling much better.
Contact Phil Dirkx at phild2008@sbcglobal.net.
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