Remember all the outrage about the claim that health-care reform would result in diminished medicine and death panels to decide what care to withhold? Comes now the New York Times to tell us that, well, actually, yes— that’s what the reform needs :
health reform will fail if we can’t sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct. The new agencies will be hounded by accusations of rationing, and Medicare’s long-term budget deficit will grow.So figuring out how we can say no may be the single toughest and most important task facing the people who will be in charge of carrying out reform. “Being able to say no,” Dr. Alan Garber of Stanford says, “is the heart of the issue.”
