Mort Kondrake, Executive Editor of Roll Call and one of the Fox News Beltway Boys, writes an interesting column (reprinted by RealClearPolitics.com) about health care. I would sooner see health care left alone, but it appears that is not an option Obama will consider. If The One is going to federalize health care in the U.S., and it sounds like he intends to do so, the proposal in this article sounds like a possible way to go about it.
I find particularly interesting the emphasis on rationing of care and hospice care for the dying. It is certainly true that we spend a large proportion of the total health care money spent in a person's entire life in the last 2-3 months of their life. Perhaps we could save much of this. To make this work, a special sort of triage doctor would have to look you (and your relatives) in the eye and say "for the following reasons we believe it is time for you to die and so you have been relegated to hospice care."
How would you like to be one of those doctors? How could we protect them from angry relatives? We face a brave new world full of dilemmas.
Later...here is a link to an article outlining one of those dilemmas concerning cancer care in the U.K.
