Rationing, in black and white

Carol Iannone writes:

This is from a webpage where the author quotes the House health care bill. The Democrats shouldn’t get all upset when someone says the health bill will lead to rationing, since the bill itself says so. Subsection (h)(2) at page 25 of the bill provides:

If the Secretary estimates for any fiscal year that the aggregate amounts available for payment of expenses of the high-risk pool will be less than the amount of the expenses, the Secretary shall make such adjustments as are necessary to eliminate such deficit including reducing benefits, increasing premiums or establishing wait lists. [emphasis added]

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Bill Carpenter writes:

When Carol Iannone says Democrats should not be upset if people say the health care bill provides for rationing, she is forgetting the important principle (which we have not yet succeed in naming) that the validity of a statement is determined by who says it. That is, it’s OK to say the bill provides for rationing if you support the bill, but if you oppose the bill it is false, slanderous, an outrage. Just as it is false to say Obama is a socialist if you oppose socialism, but it’s true and OK if you are in favor of socialism. Maybe we should call this epistemological factionalism: the possibility of knowledge and of true statements based on knowledge is determined by what faction one belongs to.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 23, 2009 02:50 PM | Send