And there's more

Ezra Klein and Jonathan Cohn both discuss the fact that former HMO fraudster Richard Scott is launching an attack on healthcare reform with the usual lies about the Canadian and British systems, among other things. (For the record: I don't have to wait an ungodly long time for appointments or treatment. More importantly, I know I will get the treatment, and that no health insurance company is going to tell my doctor to let me die or go blind or whatever because I'm not covered. If I call my doctor's office wanting an appointment because I'm ill now, I almost always get to see him that day, and if it's not an emergency, I will see him within a day or two at most in almost all cases. And I never have to think about the cost.)

[From The Sideshow March 2009 Archive]

What Avedon Carol points out only in passing is, she has a doctor. So do I. And when I go to see the doctor, usually for an annual physical, the doctor is who I see - not, like most of the people I know, a sort of para-doctor, gatekeeper, health specialist kind of guy. If they have insurance at all. If not, forget you asked.

I get health care from the VA, which means my doctor works for the government. And when I need to see a specialist, like the opthamologist who gave me my eye exam last year or, a couple of years ago, the guy who checked out my nose, they work for the government too. Sure, I had to wait a couple of weeks for the eye appointment and even longer for the nose, but so what? The only time in recent years I've called with what turned out to be an emergency I was in to see my doctor, had a prescription to a local drug store, and had a pill down my throat in a matter of hours. I have no complaints. In fact, I'm delighted with the health care I get.

And that - government health care - is way beyond what will even be proposed by the Obama administration. Single payer health care - government insurance for private health care, "Medicare for all" - is the most far-reaching solution even being discussed. And that, not much. Reportedly, not one advocate for single payer health care has been so much as invited to the administration's forthcoming health care conference.

In fact, the most likely solution to be proposed, my guess is, is some form of government subsidy for an already-failed private insurance system, the kind of Romneyesque solution that is already proving here in Massachusetts to be cumbersome at best and, at worst, just plain dumb.