Rationing by Price Is Better Than Rationing by Rules

Rationing health care by price? "Why not?" says Megan McArdle.

“If you design a formula to deny granny a pacemaker, knowing that this is the intent of the formula, then you’ve killed granny just as surely as if you’d ordered the doctor to do it directly. That’s the intuition behind the conservative resistance to switching from price rationing to fiat rationing. Using the government’s coercive power to decide the price of something, or who ought to get it, is qualitatively different from the same outcome arising out of voluntary actions in the marketplace.”

(Cross-posted from State House Call.)

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