You left out the fact that they can sue the doctors who take care of them if they feel that the care that they got wasn't perfect -- after all, if there is a bad outcome, then it must be someone else's fault.
Any discussion of health care reform must include tort reform, or there will be no change. What doctor would risk his or her career by exposing themselves to malpractice litigation by being selective about who they treat and how they treat them? None. Show up at the hospital door with a headache and plan on getting a CT scan or MRI or whatever, whether or not you are insured.
If you had a system where you could go to any grocery store and get free food if you couldn't afford to pay for it, what do you think would happen to food prices at the grocery store, presuming the grocery stores was able to stay in business? And in such a whacky system, what would grocery store reform look like under the types of solutions being proposed for medical care? And who would want to become a grocer?
Why are people more entitled to health care than groceries? Or transportation? Or housing? Can you think of any things that the government has done a good job of reforming along those lines, as opposed to totally screwing up a system that while imperfect, at least still worked?
If the "entitlement" arises from the fact that health care can be ruinously expensive to the average person, to the point that it is a crisis about which something must be done, then wouldn't the solution be to make health care costs more competitive and to lower the cost of health care? And if so, then why in God's name would you think having the government be the major payer (or perhaps the only payer), having everyone insured, and not doing anything to address tort reform would be a good idea?
It is primarily government policy that has made today's health care ruinously expensive - separating the recipient of the service from the responsibility to pay for the service, covering every senior citizen with Medicare and almost every poor person with Medicaid, and empowering the American legal system to make damned sure every doctor is never going to risk cost-cutting medical care at the peril of being sued for malpractice. And now that these failed policies have run their course driven the health care industry to its current state of crisis, they are going to step in and fix it?
The current political climate has nothing to do about any chance to improve the average person's health care and much more about preserving the status quo, providing the trial lawyers with even more potential clients, and growing the power of the current federal government.
