Rationing Health Care in Britain and the United States

Leonard J. Nelson III, Samford University

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This Content was originally published in the Journal of Health & Biomedical Law in Spring 2011, 7 J. Health & Biomedical L. 175 (2011).

Abstract

There is near universal agreement among policy experts in the United States and Britain of the need to contain costs in publicly funded programs, but rationing remains an unappealing prospect for politicians. While Britain has successfully employed implicit rationing for decades, it has now given up on explicit rationing by NICE. In the United States, rationing is even more problematic. It is unlikely that Congress will embrace an explicit rationing scheme, and even the tacit endorsement of implicit rationing measures could be politically hazardous. Rationing is the third rail of American politics, and the cost controls in PPACA may not be sufficient to save us from ourselves.