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Universal health care�Universal health care,� or �universal coverage� is the current (2008) description for socializing or nationalizing American medicine, or the financing of medicine, which ultimately has about the same result. The starting premise is that everyone should be cared for if sick or injured, without discrimination on the basis of ability to pay: thus �universal health care,� or the same care for everybody, paid for by everybody else, almost always with discrimination on the basis of ability to pay (�progressive taxation� or the more you earn, the more you pay). The conflation of �universal health care� with �universal coverage� obscures the fact that �coverage� (or the promise of payment) is not the same thing as care. Universal health care is universally associated with rationing, by explicit criteria, by the queue, or by both. The inevitable budgetary crises that accompany universal health care result in demands for �cost containment,� or for reducing the supply of services, as through price controls and increased barriers to market entry. Universal health care is associated with numerous flawed ideas on health care reform (AAPS News, January 2008). It turns insurance upside down, making it a costly check-writing mechanism for approved routine services instead of a method of protection against catastrophic financial loss. (AAPS White Paper on Medical Financing, J Am Phys Surg, Fall 2006). Although it is claimed to be motivated by compassion for the sick, it exploits and discriminates against the sick to achieve the objective of redistributing wealth (AAPS News, March 2008), and is a prescription for insolvency (AAPS News, August 2008).
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