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10/17/2004: Gem o'the Day:
Wednesday night [Bush] did it again when he served up the standard rightwing warning that “government-run health will lead to poor-quality health, will lead to rationing.” Since my mother reads this blog, let me just say &#%&#$*&#%▼◙ @$#%&*#!!!@*# to that. This slimy Republican talking point, together with its corollary – “bureaucrats will make medical decisions for you” – ignores the well-known but almost never publicly acknowledged fact that we are already rationing health care in America and bureaucrats are already making medical decisions for most of us. We ration with high deductibles, high co-pays and by failing to provide health coverage to 44-45 million Americans, 20 million of them employed. Another example of how the GOP doesn’t want to talk about class warfare, just engage in it. Call it “covert rationing.”
We will never get anywhere until our leaders acknowledge, publicly and clearly, that rationing isn’t the product of this or that system – whether wholly privatized or wholly socialized. Rationing is a necessity of every health care system because we don’t have infinite resources. A resource crisis now plagues the health care systems of the other rich, industrialized countries – all of which provide coverage to a greater proportion of their population than does the United States. America's problems won’t be resolved merely by adopting one of those as a model. But they also won’t be solved by avoiding the central issue. We’ve got to discuss the future of our entire health care system and the central issue of rationing, in-depth.
--Meteor Blades, at dKos
Len on 10.17.04 @ 05:30 PM CST
