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

To: TimF who wrote (11801)	11/25/2009 8:59:11 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

"Medicare and Medicaid aren't a right IMO but they are most definitely the law. For public programs, there is no other insurer to step in and pick up the pieces as you describe. If they go bankrupt, we go bankrupt. Legitimate fiscal conservatives would not allow that to happen. Instead they would ration to get costs under control." Where have I proposed to force Medicare and Medicare into bankruptcy? "when Medicare doesn't pay, either my secondary insurance pays or I do" Good. Now explain why this means all Americans should be forced into a rationed system that would most likely eliminate the option for self payment. (If not at first then soon after.) While you are at it you can explain when belief in personal responsibility ceased to be mainstream and in your opinion became fringe. Generally I'd wait for the person to answer themselves, but this is one thing that Lane has posted multiple times that she wouldn't support. I don't think she believes such an option will be eliminated. I know she doesn't support eliminating it, and perhaps most important at all, rationing/cost control in the government programs that we do have is an entirely separate issue than eliminating self pay, or private insurance. Regardless of whether a person such as her supports absorbing the function of insurance companies into the federal government or not it is the goal of the people who are pushing for the government takeover. If they don't get it in Obama/PelosiCare 1 there will be additional rounds until the goal is achieved. Marginalizing an inevitable major feature of the program before discussing it is disingenuous. Rational discourse cannot be the result. "So only rationing is left." Only if you assume that healthcare is a right and that the government is obligated to pay for it. I believe in personal responsibility. Rationing only affects people who won't accept personal responsibility until it is outlawed. Only if you assume government is going to pay for health care. The discourse was about the government rationing. I believe it spun off government advice to ration mammograms. My point remains that having government interfere with an individual patient and their doctor's discussion about what is medically prudent for that patient is wrong. What about a young woman I know whose grandmothers both have a history of breast cancer? She is staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Lane3 wants her to risk death because the government doesn't want to pay for mammograms until the patient is over 50. Rationing in the broadest sense of the word will happen if you assume health care is an economically scarce good When government is the single payer it will be. Political interference can be planned on. For instance it is unlikely that any major democrat or their donors will be allowed to become subject to rationing.