Rationing Healthcare

This article, was provoked by comments made by N. Greg Mankiw, who is on Mitt Romney's campaign team. Mankiw raised a question about value of adding one year to one's life by taking an expensive drug that costs $150,000.  This raises the general problem of healthcare rationing.  There are all kinds of ways to ration healthcare.  The most common way that we ration everything is through the price system. We can only purchase products and services that we can afford.  Since healthcare is commonly viewed as a public good, governments enable those who cannot afford essential treatments to receive them.  Insurance companies also enable those who pay the premiums to have access to healthcare that they would otherwise not be able to afford.  The rising price of healthcare has put stress on this system.  Government funding costs, and the high cost of health insurance, will probably lead to some form of rationing unless we do something to reduce the healthcare price inflation rate.  This is only a problem for those who will not otherwise be able to afford healthcare.  Since that includes the majority of the population, the only question is how healthcare will be rationed. Conservatives favor shifting the cost of inflation from government to households. They euphemistically refer this as "consumer directed healthcare"  In other words, rationing access to healthcare via the price system.