Rationing the immediate post-war period, rationing was in place until 1948. Shortages of food products were common in Poland at that time, but food rations also served another purpose. Cards were unevenly distributed by the Communist authorities—leading udarniks, known in Poland as "przodownicy pracy", were entitled to as much as 3700 calories daily, while some white-collar workers received as little as 600 calories a day. Rationing covered more than food products. From April 1952 to January 1953 and from August 1976 to November 1985 ration stamps were introduced for shoes, cigarettes, sugar, sweets, liquor, soap, baby diapers, tires, and cars. From
Healthcare rationing in the United States the elderly: an expanded federal bureaucracy, the pending insolvency of Medicare within a decade, and the fact that 25% of Medicare costs are incurred in the final year of life. Princeton Professor Uwe Reinhardt wrote that both public and private healthcare programs can ration and rebutted the concept that governments alone impose rationing: "Many critics of the current health reform efforts would have us believe that only governments ration things... On the other hand, these same people believe that when, for similar reasons, a private health insurer refuses to pay for a particular procedure or has a price-tiered formulary for