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Over the past four decades, the share of income devoted to health care in the United States has nearly tripled. Unless current policy changes, this worrisome trend is likely to continue. Should Americans decide to rein in the growth of health care spending, on the other hand, they will be forced to consider rationing care for the well insured –- a prospect that is odious and unthinkable to many. Can We Say No? argues that sensible health care rationing not only can save money, but can improve public health and general welfare as well.
This important and provocative book reviews Great Britain’s experience with health care rationing. The choices the British have made point up the nature of the options Americans will face if they wish to prevent health care budgets from driving taxes higher and private spending from crowding out increases in other forms of worker compensation and consumption. The authors explain why serious consideration of health care rationing in the United States is advisable, even inescapable. Can We Say No? provides the information policymakers and concerned citizens need when considering these difficult issues and formulating responsible, sustainable health care policy.
Henry J. Aaron is the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. William B. Schwartz, M.D., is an expert on national health policy and is a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California. He was formerly chairman of the Department of Medicine and Vannevar Bush University Professor at Tufts University and was also president of the American Society of Nephrology. Aaron and Schwartz are coauthors of The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care (Brookings, 1984) and coeditors of Coping with Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society (Brookings, 2004). Melissa Cox is a student at Yale Law School and a former Brookings research analyst.
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