Now, I’m well aware that having 47 million people who can’t afford medical care is a genuine social problem — although many of those millions are illegal immigrants, people between jobs and young folks who choose to go insurance-bare. I’m also aware that I can’t necessarily have everything I want, whether it’s a dozen pairs of Prada boots or a pacemaker at age 99. I know that Medicare is on the greased rails to a train wreck, and not just because of spiraling costs but because doctors are fleeing the system because they’re sick of below-cost reimbursements and crushing paperwork. There are ways to solve some of these problems: healthcare tax breaks, malpractice reform that would lower the cost of practicing medicine, efforts to make it easier to get cheap, high-deductible catastrophic coverage, steps to encourage fee-for-service arrangements of the kind that most people have with their dentists.<\/p>\n
In short, as someone who’s not getting any younger, I’d like to be the one who makes the “difficult decision” as to whether I can afford — and thus really want — that hip replacement in my extreme old age. Sorry, President Obama, but I don’t want “society”– that is, government mucky-mucks — determining that I’ve got to go sit on an ice floe just because I’m old and kind of ugly, no matter how many fancy degrees in medicine or bioethics they might have.<\/p>\n