EWOT: Week 11

                We spent a large amount of time in class this week discussing the aspects of the Health Care Reform Act in its relation to rationing.  Professor Rizzo mentioned how the equal share ration system, which he had already proven to us was inherently flawed, was the basis for the new health care law, and that out of it will come a system that is actually worse than what America currently uses.  This system will essentially ration health care and health care resources and make it harder on people that probably need the health care more to receive it.  Furthermore, he also stated that if health care was based on need, as the law should have made it, the system would still be heavily unfair, for people naturally will lie about their supposed need (as detailed in his stories about his Amherst College roommate).

                Rizzo, though, failed to go into complete detail about the system the Health Care Reform Act is replacing: another type of ration system, but owned by private corporations.  Though the corporations have the ability to insure most people, they choose to limit their customers for monetary purposes, for most HMOs act as for-profit agencies.  Furthermore, the HMO’s use somewhat of a merit- based system, for they reject the applications for health care from anyone with “pre-existing conditions,” essentially taking those who they believe they will have to pay the least for.  In the process of doing so, though, they reject a large number of people who need the health care, regardless of whether they “deserve” to have it from the perspective of the HMOs.  And, like in a queue-based system, a health care system ran by corporations allows a substantial black market to develop for those who are unable to be insured by the health care companies, wasting money that could be going into the American economy.

                So now the question that Rizzo asked in class – should health care be left to the market – has no real right answer.  In both cases, the systems being used are not purely capitalistic, and are therefore disadvantageous to a large population of Americans.