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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (8853)	8/30/2009 3:37:59 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

You realize when a policy buyer agrees to terms, he is doing the "rationing" himself. IMO you are misusing rationing to refer to consumer choice. I don't think so. The consumer choice is between rationing plan A and rationing plan B. Only if it's an individual rather than a group policy is there no rationing. but if you wish to call it that its a form of rationing no one is concerned about. I won't argue with that. Some forms of rationing are more palatable than others. I'm only arguing that it still falls within the framework of rationing. The rationing I care about is when an official (like Obama's panel thats "outside the normal political channels") makes the decision for you - telling you no, you can't have that, you're too old, we don't think your projected life is long enough to justify it for the good of society .... OK. That's fine. We all have our preferences. The only rationing I care about personally is rationing by queue. I would care about the one you care about if it were illegal to go outside the system to get the care as in the case in Britain in at least some instances. But as long as the system is saying "we won't pay for this treatment" as opposed to "you may not legally have this treatment" I accept it. Any health care plan including a government one is free to determine what it will and won't pay for. When the government starts making things outside the plan illegal, that's where I rebel. We can't run a scientific experiment, we just have to live with the evidence we have. Your evidence isn't good enough to support your claim because you ignore the variables. Not unless you can recognize and adjust the variables. As long as there is choice there is consumer pressure to move towards some norm. In Britain and Canada you have minimal normative pressure. In mixed systems you do. So you're comparing apples and oranges. No reason to ignore the evidence offered by real-life examples of socialized systems. It would be silly to ignore it. Indeed, it would be silly to ignore it. Just as it's silly to compare the two formats head on. We can learn from the socialized systems, for sure, just as long as we recognize and adjust for the differences in the frameworks. But under the plans being discussed there won't be competition much longer. That wouldn't surprise me. But you still have to add that as a caveat when you make broad assertions like governmental systems always have more rationing. I would not argue with "monopoly systems are likely to have more rationing." As you can see by the Fortune magazine analysis, its not just my assumption. I don't have a quarrel with that assumption, only with your failure to stipulate it when making over-broad charges. Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare: No need to lecture me on the shortfall in the Obamacare proposal. I'm well aware of it.