Healthcare rationing
Dear Editor:
A few well chosen quotes; some important sounding acronyms; spin it with some faulty logic; and presto! One can reach the misguided conclusion that the Affordable Care Act results in rationing. When you strip away the hyperbole from the word rationing you find that more reasonable people are really talking about budgeting. For instance: When a member of our “working poor” decides not to visit a doctor even when serious symptoms appear, that’s not rationing, it’s budgeting. When an insurance company decides to withhold coverage from an insured policy holder, they are not rationing, but budgeting.
Similarly, when an insurance company refuses coverage to someone with a preexisting condition, they are not rationing, they are minding their budget.
When a governor refuses to expand Medicaid for 70,000 citizens who fall within the category of “working poor,” that actually is rationing because it brings money into the state to cover uncovered hospital expenses.
In these pages when the idea behind the Affordable Care Act was conceived by the Heritage Foundation and nurtured to life by Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts; some of you dear readers may recall that I wrote about the unsustainable costs of the healthcare complex in Lincoln County. The board of the hospital made some tough and unpopular decisions (and handled them badly). But they had to because they had to mind their budget. In short, the changes we are experiencing with St. Andrews have been brewing for years.The thing is, not matter how you cut it; no one is entitled to unlimited healthcare. There is going to be budgeting at some level or as the hyperventilating polemicist call it: rationing.
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