Who's rationing, and what's being rationed?

Sens. McConnell and Kyl are cosponsoring a bill to prevent the federal government from rationing health care. Without such a measure, OMG IT COULD BE AS BAD AS CANADA!! (The press release even manages to work in a comparison to "socialized health-care systems.")

But why single out public insurance with your fear of rationing, when private insurers (actually, already) deny care to the people they cover all day long? Today's Leonhardt column details the various destructive ways care is being rationed now. ("The choice isn’t between rationing and not rationing. It’s between rationing well and rationing badly.") And Ezra points to the fact that the factor by which more Canadians than Americans have to wait for care is about the same as the factor by which more Americans than Canadians AVOID care because it's too expensive. He and others have pointed to this study before--it's from 2001--but this doesn't keep the rationing boogey man from remaining a political winner.

If the Republicans think not having to wait in line awhile for elective surgery is more important than ensuring that lower-income people can have surgery at all, they should say so. Of course, they won't--they'll just keep whining about how Americans want to make their own health decisions, with their doctors, instead of having some big government bureaucracy tell them what care they can and can't have access to. They won't mention that a big PRIVATE bureaucracy is already doing this, a lot.

Jonathan Cohn asked both senators this morning whether they'd like to outlaw rationing for private insurers, too. He hasn't gotten a reply yet.