[quote=davelj]So, to get to your question, overall medical costs would be reduced if certain (expensive) procedures were simply made unavailable to the population at large, because “we the people” would not be paying for them. So, yes, the cost at the high end will decline if it is rationed because these procedures will be unavailable – we simply won’t pay for them. And, no, there would be no increase in prices because the services would simply not be made available. To use a specific example, the price to Society of “treating” folks with pancreatic cancer would decline dramatically because we simply wouldn’t treat them – they would die before spending god-only-knows-how-much money on them.[/quote]

Dave: I’m going to veer off into the philosophical
side of the argument here. While I see your point above and can agree from a cost/benefit analysis angle, does this not open up a whole different can of worms, and from the ethical/bioethical vantage?

While Palin’s “Death Panel” assertion was ham-handed, the underlying logic was sound regarding rationing and quality of life calculus. The British NHS maintains NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), an Orwellian bureau name, if there ever was one. NICE is responsible for “Quality” and “Outcomes” standards and functions, in essence, as the arbiter of who gets what and why.

Are we not ceding certain questions to the government that we really don’t want them answering? I’m not trying to sound alarmist or sensationalist, but the heavy hand of government is slowly and inexorably sweeping away our civil liberties and, as far as medicine and ethics goes, the US Government doesn’t exactly have the best track record (see eugenics research in the 1920s and 1930s, Tuskegee, LSD testing in the 1960s).