We should be careful in criticizing government proposals to ration health care. In every other area of government, we want rationing. We want our leaders to decide on priorities and find the least expensive, most efficient way to fulfill and pay for them. We argue that government should eliminate high-cost, low-result expenses.
That's rationing, and it's a good thing. It's called "living within your means." There isn't enough money or time to do everything we want to do, so we ration our resources based on how much money or time we have.
The hard reality of life is that whoever pays gets to decide what to ration. Remember the golden rule? "Whoever has the gold makes the rules." Well, obviously that's not the real Golden Rule, but if it's your money, you decide what to buy and what to forego. The perversion of having government involved in health care is that when the government is the payer, the decisions about what services you will - or won't - receive are politicians and government bureaucrats, not you and your doctor. So my question is: Why do so many people want to give politicians control of their health care?