My Proposed Formula for Health Care Rationing

In response to my recent article in U.S. News & World Report, and to some of my blog posts, several people have pointed out this indisputable fact: Resources being finite, some form of rationing is inevitable and necessary. I agree.

So I propose that we start freeing up dollars to improve and expand medical and support services, by denying health care funds for the following:

• Any health care executive, manager, or administrator whose salary exceeds the average salary of a government or nonprofit executive, manager, or administrator overseeing a similarly-sized operation
• Any health care system employee whose duties do not directly benefit health care consumers
• Insurance company shareholders
• Long-term residential institutions such as nursing facilities, large group homes, “state schools,” and intermediate care facilities which confine people needing support services
• Profiteering manufacturers and vendors of medical supplies and durable medical equipment, i.e., those whose profit margins significantly exceed the profit margins of other products with similar research/development and manufacturing costs
• Physicians and other providers who refuse to serve lower-paying consumers
• Physicians and other providers who discriminate against some health care consumers based on age, disability, sexual orientation, language, cultural background, or other arbitrary factors

Who else would you add to this list? Feel free to post a comment with your recommendations.

Until we make the cuts suggested above, I will oppose any and all current or proposed denials of health care based on disability, age, income, job status, insurance coverage (or lack thereof), pre-existing conditions, immigration status, or other arbitrary factors.

Health care should not be a privilege, nor a commodity. Health care is a human right. Let’s not forget that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, co-authored by Eleanor Roosevelt, supported by the United States, and adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, included the following statement in Article 25:

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”