MAINE COMPASS: Cold reality is that rationing health care is inevitable | The Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME

MAINE COMPASS: Cold reality is that rationing health care is inevitable

Rep. Lance Harvell

Richard Lamm, director of the Institute for Public Policy Studies at the University of Denver has just published "The Brave New World of Health Care," in which he argues that widespread rationing is inevitable within the next 20 years.

Otherwise, Lamm warns, health care will become a fiscal black hole that will consume our children's future. As he sees it, "The health care system is consuming massive resources that are desperately needed in other parts of the economy if we are to leave our children a sustainable society."

His book proposes six essential reforms:

* Provide access for all to a base level of health care.
* Develop a means of limiting the use of procedures that are ineffective or marginally effective, or that are effective but too expensive.
* Develop a consensus on social and individual health care priorities.
* Place limitations on malpractice suits.
* Control the health care bureaucracy.
* Place limitations on the supply side of health care.

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MAINE COMPASS: Cold reality is that rationing health care is inevitable | The Kennebec Journal, Augusta, ME