On the subject of health care and rationing.

[Lyric]

The right-wing seems to fear the idea of "rationing" healthcare. The problem is that healthcare is already rationed. Single-payer universal healthcare would simply change the dynamic, so that NEED and not INCOME would be the standard of measurement for who gets what treatments first.

For the wealthy, private healthcare is always going to be an option, as for-profit physicians and hospitals in other nations are merely a private jet flight away. They can still buy their way to the front of the line, if they're willing to fork over the cash. They just won't be able to do it HERE.

As for the rest of us--I CHALLENGE our government to poll America on whether healthcare should be rationed based on ability to pay (what we have NOW) or based on medical need. I daresay that, when it's put that way, the amount of support for single-payer healthcare would rise even higher than it already is.

Other nations can do as they wish, but we deserve better here. Nobody should have to die because they couldn't afford healthcare. If we look back at the history of the medical profession, we will find that such a travesty and horror as this would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago. Physicians were often paid with crops, chickens, and homemade goods, and were GLAD to accept such payment because their #1 priority was saving lives and caring for the health of their community. Inability to pay was not grounds for refusal of care. In today's world, the opposite is true. We now have HMO's and insurance companies who stand as knee-breakers between patients and their doctors; if you can't pony up, you don't get help, and doctors are rarely required to look these poor people in the eyes before turning them away. Cold, faceless corporate bureaucracy at its worst.

There are many physicians who hate this change as much as we do, but there are also many of them who enjoy the fact that they don't lose any standing in their community by refusing care to those who can't pay. It's all swept under the rug, all out of sight, brutally anonymous. Just numbers on a sheet--not lives, not families. So many of our doctors today have lost their stake in caring for their communities, and worse--since they've never known anything else, they don't miss what's been lost. Older physicians are largely appalled at the change. The doctor who provided my newborn son's general well-baby care was one of those older physicians--70 years old and still going strong, practicing medicine as the only doctor in a rural community of less than 800 people. He often lamented that the younger doctors are today are no longer connected to the people they care for. He said that many of them function like cogs in a hospital machine, with little concern for anything but the mechanical aspect of the practice. He was right.

The right-wing loves to whine about the loss of our "traditions." What about the longstanding tradition that doctors are not doctors in order to become rich? That physicians have a higher calling and a more important purpose than profit? That physicians have a moral responsibility that directly contradicts the idea of refusing care to those who cannot pay? That a doctor has a connection to his or her community that is deeper and more profound than patient identification numbers on a chart? That the whole community is better off when EVERYONE, rich or poor, has access to basic healthcare, regardless of ability to pay for it?

THAT tradition, of doctors as almost-sacred community healers and servants, seems to be conveniently missing from their much-bemoaned list of "abandoned traditions." Considering the modern dog-eat-dog, profit-first, bureaucratic dynamic of the society in which we live, it's not too difficult to see why the right-wing doesn't care about THIS lost tradition.

Single-payer healthcare is important in order to ensure fairness in care, but it's also important for other reasons, including this one: it can help bring back the idea of community doctors, doctors who are an integral part of the places they live, doctors who can reclaim the sanctity of their profession by throwing out cold bureaucracy and greed, and embracing the respected roles that their forebears held within the cities and towns they lived and worked in. Doctors who know and care about the families they heal, and who treasure their relationship to their community FAR more than they treasure a $500,000 house and a garage full of luxury cars. Doctors who choose to specialize in general medicine again, forsaking the temptation of lucrative specializations in favor of working toward the best interests of their community. Doctors who cherish the rewards of satisfaction, mercy, respect, fellowship, and compassion at a higher value than material rewards. With single-payer providing the impetus to change and the financial support that our doctors need, we can start to work toward recovering what we, as a nation, have lost. We can reclaim a piece of the American culture that profit and bureaucracy have stolen from us--a piece of culture that isn't branded, trademarked, or corporately-sponsored.

THIS is an example of a tradition that most of us would gladly bring back.

[Cleita]

1. We already have rationing under our laissez faire health plans. You are

only allowed to have what they have set as necessary, and that they will pay for if you jump through the right hoops, like certain screening tests every year, maybe every two years or every five years or lab procedures. You may not be able to have certain surgeries until the insurance company has determined you meet the right criteria. People have died because of this rationing. You might not be able to go to an ER they don't have a contract with unless you get their permission. Yep the ambulance is going to wait for that. Most heinous of rationing is between those who get health care with the ability to pay and those who don't because they can't pay.

[Lyric]

2. Precisely.

I would imagine that, if asked, the VAST majority of people would rather see health care distributed based on NEED than based on income.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

3. I don't know - that sounds awfully socialist to

me . Sounds like a commie pinko idea. Ya know, that we should all have what we need.

:sarcasm: