Rationing health care.

Klein summarizes and critiques the conclusions reached by Henry J. Aaron and William B. Schwartz in The Painful Prescription, a major American study of the rationing policies of Britain's National Health Service. Aaron and Schwartz compared the performance of the British and American health care systems, demonstrated that the British levels of medical activity are much lower in some categories than the American, and showed the importance of cultural differences in determining the attitudes of physicians and patients toward medical intervention. Klein praises certain aspects of the study while drawing attention to its failure to address more fully the problems of health care outcomes, macroallocation, and fairness.