Beth Haynes on Rationing

Beth Haynes has a good column out at townhall.com.  I particularly like this explanation, but read the whole thing:

The same people who say the ACA will not ration will also tell you that markets ration through prices. This is an erroneous portrayal of the role of prices in a free market. Free market prices are simply a signal. Prices do not ration any more than a bathroom scale makes you fat or thin. Free market prices reflect the relative scarcity of resources and then allow you to decide how to allocate your own private resources. Free market prices are what people voluntarily pay; government rationing is an act of force. It's a fundamentally different kind of interaction when the government forcibly determines how your resources must be allocated—either by expropriating them first, as in the case of Medicare, or by mandating how you must spend them, as in the case of the individual mandate to purchase health insurance.