"It will all be better when we get Government Paid Health Care"......Sure

Article: The nasty choices needed to save the NHS

The more I research the issue of "nationalized health care" the more it becomes clear that it is not a "solution" but a "shift". You see right now health care coverage and payments are an individual matter in the United States. Your job must provide it, your retirement program - including Medicare - must provide it or if you are poor - Medicaid - must do so. Or you can simply do without coverage and take your chances.

The goal of those pushing for a catch all system in which the government assures that everyone has health care coverage is nothing more than an attempt to put the burden of everyone's health care COSTS upon the nation. In theory, they say, not everyone will be sick at one time thus as they pay their premiums (that would be TAXES) into the system these funds will be used for those who are sick.

As any person without a degree in rocket science can tell you - once you remove the SUPPOSED economic rationing as the present system has and once you build more facilities to handle the uptick in people seeking care - the fact that you were NEVER dealing with an unlimited resource - you will at some point run into a resource constraint and have to make a decision on how to control its rampant growth.

Of course - when you are attempting to sell a program on the front end - you don't talk about how things will be 10 years from now. You talk about the glories of having universal coverage. As with any such plan - those who get a net benefit from the nothing they have today will see this as a great program. "Where do I get more?". Those who see this is a government weigh loss program in that their wallets will be much lighter to pay for this - are attempting to prevent this dead on assault upon economic freedom in America.

Why is there no propensity to look at the guy who has already walked the same path that you are about to take, make note of his disabled car and agree not to drive over the same terrain that he did?

First is rationing. Nearly all of us now know that the NHS � the taxpayer � cannot afford to pay for all the treatments and drugs that are already available, still less for those that will be developed in the future.

The demand is going to be almost infinite; tax receipts are not. As more conditions become treatable and patients’ demands become more sophisticated, this problem will soon be a great deal worse.

Everyone knows this and most people admit it, except for politicians. Doctors and think tanks have been pressing the government to recognise it for years. The Institute for Public Policy Research reported in 2000 that the public would lose confidence in the NHS unless the government admitted that state healthcare must be rationed. Indeed it already is, one way and another.