re: #282 Pepper Fox

They’ll have to build new hospitals everyday for the baby boomers retiring regardless, and half this field will retire in the next 10 years. Someone has to fix the machines!

You’re making a big assumption. To control costs, there WILL be rationing. When the market is not there to control supply versus demand through the pricing mechanism, something has to act in the place of price. That something is the advisory panel, which will surely conclude it is more cost effective to spend money on the young’s health care and not buy that expensive medical equipment on an older person in the process of dying. Sounds cold—and it is. That is how Europeans control health care costs. It’s not a “death panel”, but the last days of ones’ life are often the most expensive for the least return (on life expectancy). Metrics for doing that cost/benefit analysis will be developed, and the amount of money approved will be weighed against those standards.