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Pharmaceutical Dollar Rationing by Results

The US economy cannot afford to provide unlimited medical treatments to everybody who wants them, any more than it can afford to provide McMansions for everybody who wants a house.

In a free market medical system consumers 'ration' their consumption of health treatments by making cost-benefit decisions. First they ask themselves if the treatment will really produce the promised benefits. Then they ask themselves if those benefits are worth the cost of treatment. Then they ask themselves if their family has other higher spending priorities for that money. Then they decide whether or not to purchase the treatment.

Health treatments are an expensive component of people's and nations' budgets. The decision about how much to spend on health treatments is made in the context of competing demands for a limited amount of household or national spending money. Pharmaceutical 'rationing' is just part of everybody's 'rationing' of their spending in one area so there is more left to spend in other areas. Health treatments are most assuredly NOT free and any program--whether health insurance or government health care--that oversubsidizes individuals' health purchasing decisions will see demand for treatments and total systemic costs skyrocket beyond any economy's ability to pay. ...unless they ration health care by limiting access to the system, as Canada and many other public health care systems practice.

Comparing Medicine’s Cost and Effectiveness

Great post! Without cost-benefit information no rational health treatment choices are possible. All decisions become political rather than economic and scientific. Any move to analyse the relative costs and benefits of competing treatments should be very welcome to everyone who buys health treatments, which is all of us.