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[sjc <indexer AT fairpoint.net>]

bob ford wrote:
> Marie, Medicare hasn't even started hitting the boomer generation, yet, and 
> it is already broke.  yesterday (I think in the WSJ), a leading gov't doc was 
> talking about using the UK system to determine how much it was worth - for 
> the gov't-- to prolong a life (about $30,000 for a year, for someone our 
> age).  That is rationing, today, before the gov't admits there is no money.
>   
Anyone who believes health care is not rationed today, now, here, all 
around us,  is living in a dream world.  If you were to allowed 
watch/listen in any emergency room in any major and many minor health 
care facilities you'd get a really, really fast education about health 
care and who gets what; unless you've already been there, it would 
likely be on the order of a shock; they're not all "poor people", but 
they all lose......

The part that is beginning to distress mainstream America is that it's 
now moving into the middle classes, whereas before (until say the 
mid-late sixties, where I was, IN & VA) it was mostly lower 
income/social levels who came up short, now it's really gaining speed.  
Now you can make a lot of money, and have the 'best' of records and 
previous care.....but if it doesn't suit the insurance company to pay 
they have many ways to shut you out believe me.   In addition to 
outright denial (often with no reason given, bogus reasons perfectly 
acceptable, etc), there are others:  costing services/procedures so high 
they can't be paid for, delay tactics (dead folks don't need a new 
kidney), and seemingly endless other ways to deny health services. 

Having said that, I think that there is no way, now or in the future, 
that we can count on seeing a time without rationing.  It just isn't 
within the realm of current possibility, anyway, to expect to live long, 
replace parts at 'will' or by necessity, and so on without hitting some 
price barrier.  But there sure as the world should be some way to fairly 
apportion needed services across the board....what we have simply 
enriches a few at the mercy of the many.

SJ