Oh, FTLOP!

I don't really have much respect for Andrew Sullivan as a thinker, but I thought he was better than this.

"People love honesty, but they hate the truth. To frankly acknowledge and address the ineluctable reality of healthcare rationing is not merely to touch the proverbial third rail of American politics; it is to lie across the tracks in front of the onrushing train. Come, let us speak of unpleasant things. How is health care to be rationed? Who gets the short end of the stick?" - Eric Chevlen, First Things, via Megan.

The quote is from this article, in which a doctor who is a consultant for a private insurance company comes to the conclusion that, lo and behold! we should rely on private insurance companies because a government run program will result in rationing. Whoda thunkit? Happily, the commenters call him on it. (His argument starts with a flawed assumption -- that rationing is inevitable because there can't be enough health care to go around. Based, it seems, on the practices of private insurers, who have a vested interest in rationing health care -- it's called "profits." The article limps along from there.)

The links are screwed up, so I can't get to Megan McArdle's comments (I assume that's the "Megan" that Sullivan is referring to. It seems like her kind of thing.) Hah! Found it! It's rather thin, and she starts from the same assumption. To be fair, I haven't been following McArdle on health care reform -- I don't think much of her to begin with, and my sense from what I've read of comments on her comments is that she's reliably advancing "libertarian" arguments -- and you all know what I think of that.