Rationing Health Care

Modern medicine works miracles. It also breaks the bank — and nowhere more ferociously than in the United States.

After a brief pause in the HMO grip of the 1990s, American spending on health care is soaring again. By 2014, it is projected to hit $11,000 per American per year.

Costs like that are already hobbling GM. Soon, they could hobble the country. All other developed nations have controls on health care spending. Now, the call is going up for the US to ration health care or drown in medical bills.

That extra CT scan? Nope. That cutting edge pill? Not likely. Britons know the drill. So do Canadians. Next, it may be you.

Hear about rationing health care in the USA.

Guests:

Eduardo Porter, business reporter for the New York Times;
Henry Aaron, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "Can We Say No?: The Challenge of Rationing Health Care.";
Dr. David Himmelstein, practices and teaches medicine at Cambridge Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a co-founder (along with his spouse, Dr. Steffie Woolhandler) of Physicians for a National Health Program.