Rationing exists in our current health care process and rationing will exist in any health care system operated by any government. This is a simple reality: When there is a limited supply, there will always be a method for rationing it. In a totally free market (our current system is nowhere close to fitting that definition) dollars take care of the rationing question. People with more dollars get more service. It sounds cold, perhaps even brutal, but that's the way it is. But a government operated system must also manage a limited supply. Instead of rationing based upon the dollars of patients, it's rationing will be based upon other economic factors. For example -- which makes more economic sense: Spend tens of thousands on a 10 week premature crack baby or spend tens of thousands of dollars on a kidney transplant for a 70 year old diabetic? Or, perhaps neither should get care and those dollars should be spent on a thousand healthy school aged children in order to assure they grow up to become productive members of society. Someone has to make a decision, someone is going to call that decision biased and unfair. Someone wins, someone loses. We can't have it all.
As Democrat leaders scramble to push their system upon an unwilling body politic we get a glimpse of how the real rationing will take place. Observe the special deals made with various states in order to get a vote. Observe the special deals exempting union members from taxes on their free market insurance policies. Observe the penalties placed upon individuals who choose to have a better health plan, or no health plan at all. You see, dollars still rule the rationing process. Only now, it's dollars that are translated into political contributions and favors. Rationing will be decided by bribery. Rationing will be managed by a ruling class.
You see, in the quest for equal treatment we will inevitably and irrevocably find that, just as George Orwell noted in "Animal Farm," some pigs are more equal than others.
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