Biotech Values

[Tim Fowler]

I agree with what I see as the main point of the article. If you include "rationing by price" as a form of rationing, then any scarce good, will need to be rationed in some way and that health care is no exception to this general rule.

As for "and gets relatively mediocre outcomes. Life expectancy is not only lower in the U.S. than in all three of those countries, it's below average for all industrialized countries. In short, the rest of the industrialized world does a better job of rationing health care than we do."

I'm not really sure that that statement is correct. Life expectancy is determined by many things besides the health care system. Also an extended life expectancy is only one of the benefits of improved health care. So if all you have is that country X has a lower life expectancy than country Y, you can't reasonably conclude that country Y has better health care, particularly if the life expectancy differences as modest.