Handling the coronavirus crisis

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During the current delta-driven Covid-19 wave, Americans are being transported hundreds of miles from their homes because no nearby hospital has room for them. Some of them have even died waiting for medical attention. In other words, US hospitals are being forced — in the middle of a public health emergency — to ration health care for their patients.

Rationing has long been a dirty word in US health policy, used as an attack on any socialized health program that more centrally determines which medical services will be covered and for whom. The US health system has always rationed care through cost: It’s de facto rationing when a patient doesn’t get the medical care they need because they can’t pay out-of-pocket costs or because they live in a rural community without a facility nearby.
“We’re so used to rationing by ability-to-pay in this country that classic capacity rationing feels a bit foreign,” Hannah Neprash, a health economist at the University of Minnesota, said in an email..

US hospitals and ICUs are full of Covid-19 patients, forcing care rationing - Vox