The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

After Lawrence Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council, admits that the U.S. economy will continue to contract "for some time to come," yet more truth manages to escape his lips.

As John Lott, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, notes, on TV Sunday Summers clearly implied that the Obama administration plans to try to control healthcare costs in the future by rationing healthcare. Summers, Lott writes

let the cat out of the bag on health care. In explaining why universal health care wasn't going to increase the deficit, Summers said  that people are just getting too much unnecessary care. Summers claimed: "whether it's tonsillectomies or hysterectomies . . . procedures are done three times as frequently [in some parts of the country than others] and there's no benefit in terms of the health of the population. And by doing the right kind of cost-effectiveness, by making the right kinds of investments and protection, some experts that we - estimate that we could take as much as $700 billion a year out of our health care system."

This sure seems like rationing.

Americans spend far too much on healthcare, according to Summers, and government is going to force them to spend less. Patients get too many surgeries such as "tonsillectomies or hysterectomies," Summers says.

Lott finds it "strange that the Democratic Party, a group that doesn't think the government should intervene between a doctor and a woman when it comes to determining whether or not to have an abortion, appears to have no problem in telling doctors whether they can perform tonsillectomies or hysterectomies."

Indeed.