Dictatorial Rationing IPAB vs. Savior of American Healthcare IPAB.
Civility vs. Ad Hominem Hyperbolics
Rationality vs. Progressivism.
Dr. Rich vs. Shadowfax.

An epic cage match, with a very decided victor.

It always amazes me how modern-day Communists and Marxists insist that this time, collectivism is really going to work.  Big government advocates (and yes, this includes plenty of Republicans) are positive that this expansion of government powers, with the accompanying encroachment into taxpayer’s wallets, is going to work. Liberal single-payer health care advocates are sure that government-run health care, this time, is really going to work, in spite of the plain evidence that it’s never worked yet:

Take cancer as one example. Compared to the U.S., breast cancer mortality is 9% higher in Canada (according to the government statistics of each country), 52% higher in Germany and 88% higher in the United Kingdom (according to studies published in Lancet Oncology). Prostate cancer mortality is 604% higher in Britain.

Those in need of timely care from specialists are better off in the U.S. Drawing on several peer-reviewed studies, Dr. Scott Atlas of the Stanford University Medical Center notes that patients who need knee and hip replacement, cataract surgery, and radiation treatment wait months longer in the United Kingdom and Canada than in the United States.

But conservatives are the “poor, uneducated and easy to command” people who “cling to their guns and religion,”and are intellectually stunted because of their limbic brains.

Remember when union members blocked conservatives from entering town halls when we wanted to complain about Obamacare to our representatives? Remember when they beat Kenneth Gladney for selling Gadsden flags outside a town hall meeting? Instead of the power of persuasion, they used “the persuasion of power.”

Market forces apply to us – when’s the last time you got a raise? How many people do you know who have lost their jobs? But they don’t apply to unions. Just try firing a union member.

They hire non-union picketers to protest hiring of non-union workers.

Secret ballots? Not so much.  How would you like to wake up one day and learn that your home is now a union shop?

The unions got what they wanted – Obamacare was rammed through. And now they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure it applies to us, and not to them.

Oh, it’s not the hypocrisy, though they certainly have that in abundance. It’s the naked, shameless authoritarianism. It’s abundantly clear they expect to live by different standards than the ones they want to enforce on the rest of us.

My husband’s employer had to freeze pay rates and omit bonuses this year.  At the same time, the cost of insurance went up.  His employer absorbed the majority of the cost increase, but employees had to take a hit, as well.  Given the rising cost of food and gasoline, our family is definitely trying to make do with less.

But not 32% less, along with less pleasant working conditions in which my husband is expected to perform the exact same job.

On the other hand… hey, doctors are rich, so let’s stick it to them! From Heritage:

She’s not alone. A group known as Docs4PatientCare, led by Dr. Hal Scherz, has brought together doctors across America to make the case for repealing Obamacare.

I realize that to some people, especially government employees math is hard. But healthcare is not now and has never been, anywhere in the world, FREE. It’s just a question of deciding who bears the cost for it. Some people are demanding that doctors do so.  It’s only fair, they reason, that people so privileged as doctors be required to give back, besides, it’s immoral to make a profit off sick people.

They never seem to wonder exactly with what these doctors are privileged.  Crushing education debt?  Long hours?  Incredibly high malpractice premiums?  The right to have your name ruined by some yahoo looking for a quick buck when he sues you?  The right to have a jury easily swayed by a convincing attorney award him the value of years worth of your labor?

Give back? That’s based on the theory they took something away from people in the first place.  What did they take? No one seems to know.

But ask yourself – would you work hard and bear heavy responsibility without being well-compensated for it?  At some point, wouldn’t you decide that if you’re going to be paid less anyway, you’d rather take an easier job? I would.

Doctors are already voting with their feet in Massachusetts, which has suffered under an Obamacare-type plan for several years.  Sure, everyone is covered by insurance.  But good luck finding a doctor.

Fifty-six percent of Massachusetts internal medicine physicians no longer are accepting new patients, according to a 2009 physician work-force study conducted by the Massachusetts Medical Society. For new patients who do get an appointment with a primary-care doctor, the average waiting time is 44 days, the Medical Society found.

And that’s not just in Massachusetts.

The House of Representatives will soon vote on repealing Obamacare, but the vote is largely symbolic because there’s little chance Harry Reid will permit it come to a vote in the Senate. Even if it did pass a Senate vote, President Obama would surely veto it. Obama promised that if we like our plan, if we like our doctor, we can keep them.  I do like my doctor and I want to keep her.  That’s why I’m doing my part to keep the heat on Congress to repeal Obamacare, and failing that, chip away at it and refuse to fund it.  In other words, to stop giving her reasons to quit.

Crossposted.