潇湘渌水 @ 2010-03-14 12:58
在美国医改辩论中常用rationing，我好几次搞错了意思，第一眼看去的时候总以为是我们计划经济时代常用的“配给”，于是印象就大打折扣，但是作为原意“定量配给”的这个名词貌似在英文中还比较中性，从Jason的HE博客中摘录的这段话，就不翻译了，要认真对待这语言差异。配给可以通过多种途径：价格机制、医院排队、保险预付等等。
The N.Y. Times Magazine has a nice piece on rationing health care. Below is an excerpt.
“Health care is a scarce resource, and all scarce resources are rationed in one way or another. In the United States, most health care is privately financed, and so most rationing is by price: you get what you, or your employer, can afford to insure you for. But our current system of employer-financed health insurance exists only because the federal government encouraged it by making the premiums tax deductible. That is, in effect, a more than 0 billion government subsidy for health care. In the public sector, primarily Medicare, Medicaid and hospital emergency rooms, health care is rationed by long waits, high patient copayment requirements, low payments to doctors that discourage some from serving public patients and limits on payments to hospitals.”
Health care is a scarce good an must be rationed. Unlike most goods, healthy people generally do not demand zero medical care, so some people are under the assumption that medical care is only for the sick and thus should not be rationed. However, since medical care is costly, it must be rationed. This rationing can take many forms: the scope of what your insurance company (or Medicare) will cover, waiting lines, or increased prices you must pay out of pocket for medical services.
