…Not to Obama et al, but to our fellow Americans who identify as “conservative”.

It was sneeky. It wasn’t honest. I know we really need some sort of “Improved Medicare for all” type thing, and that thousands of people die a year in the US for lack of access to health care. I get that.

But Jacob Hacker’s deceptive plan made liars of us all. And we progressives are not fundamentally liars. But I think we were with the whole “public option” thing. And for that we should be genuinely sorry, for real.

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What we pay, both in terms of per capita and in terms of GDP, for Medicare and Medicade alone, provides “free at point of need” UHC in the UK and Canada. Nobody knows exactly where all the Medicare money actually goes. If we could just figure that out, we could create a UHC system for the US, similar to the NHS, that didn’t even raise taxes at all! Conservatives and independents, IME, are not opposed to this idea.

The issue of healthcare rationing needs to be hit head-on.

According to the supreme court:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/search/display.html?terms=pension%20or%20erisa&url=/supct/html/98-1949.ZS.html

 However, inducement to ration care is the very point of any HMO scheme, and rationing necessarily raises some risks while reducing others.

So, rationing will have to happen under a “Medicare for all” system. We already have rationing, it’s just not transparent or acknowledged. I think we progressives should advocate:

1) a transparent rationing process, and…

2) vehemently defending the RIGHT of people to pay for healthcare outside of “the system”. Yes, this will create a “two tiered” system, where the wealthy get better care, but we already have a two triered system (while we’re already rationing), and the system we have now is even worse.

Right now, our “progressive leaders” have decided to pass the rationing hot potato to doctors, demanding that they quiety ration at the bedside. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true, and I can prove it.

Read the whole thing here:

(warning, Dr Rich is a conservative, but this is one of those areas where “we” overlap with “them”.)

http://covertrationingblog.com/rebuilding/medical-ethics-smack-down-drrich-vs-the-american-college-of-physician