Dan, Why the big fear of Guvment? What you have today is a Guvment controlled health care system that is remarkably inefficient.

It is just time to make some major fixes to it. The Guvment decides who can administer medicine, who can manufacture drugs, who can sell drugs, where you can buy drugs from, which drugs can be sold, what drugs can be used in the US, who can open a hospital and how many hospitals can be opened in an area, how health insurance is run and in what states it may run. The Guvment funds huge portions of the health care research, it pays for large parts of doctors educations. It runs the VA medical system and the Indian Affairs system. It runs Medicare and Medicaid. Health care is Guvment run.

So the question really isn't should Guvment be involved in health care, it is how do we get a more efficient system that costs less and has better outcomes. You say you are afraid of rationing and point to some Europeans as an example. I hear the same story from Canadians. Complaining about their health care system is a national past time used to fill in the winter months between hockey games. The difference is that Canadians don't make life decisions based on trying to maintain health insurance. Many of us on this board are just a layoff away from no insurance --- you try paying for Cobra while on unemployment. Try getting decent insurance with pre-existing conditions, i.e. you are over 40. Many decide they or their spouse can't retire because they aren't old enough for Medicare - pretty big life decision. My some what affluent neighbor sold their house and moved to another state so that they could continue to get assistance in keeping their severely disabled daughter at home. These are all issues that don't face Euros and the Canadians because their health care systems are not tied to high-end jobs.

Rationing, of course there will be and is rationing. If you don't have insurance now, then the rationing occurs by waiting till you are willing to spend all you have saved and then go bankrupt. If you have insurance, the rationing is done by the approval process in a for profit insurance company. I just spent 7 months getting $1,000 out of my insurance company. My plan was either they were going to pay, which they rightfully should have, or they were going to spend at least $1,000 of time on my account. Eventually they paid. Medicare rations today as it decides what procedures are covered. So what. Any scarce resource is going to be rationed. It often sounds like people with existing high end insurance are afraid they may get a less. The whole concept of insurance is shared risk.

We do need health care reform. What we have is inefficient - it costs more than anyone elses and does not provide better outcomes to the population.

Paul L