As the debate on health care continues, liberals in Washington continue to try to convince Americans that we need government-run health care. Rather than tell the truth about long waits, denied treatments, lack of trained professionals, and bureaucratic mistakes, they try to convince listeners that the problems of the current system can only be solved by more government.

With that in mind, I will present one case study of government-run care per day - either for 100 days, or until the debate in Washington is over. These stories are drawn from the book Shattered Lives, by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

This is story number two:

NHS Nightmare: Repeated Surgery Cancellations Kill Elderly Cancer Patient

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As the debate on health care continues, liberals in Washington continue to try to convince Americans that we need government-run health care. Rather than tell the truth about long waits, denied treatments, lack of trained professionals, and bureaucratic mistakes, they try to convince listeners that the problems of the current system can only be solved by more government.

With that in mind, I will present one case study of government-run care per day - either for 100 days, or until the debate in Washington is over. These stories are drawn from the book Shattered Lives, by the National Center for Public Policy Research.

This is story number one:

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Obama (D-IL): “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process” (3/24/07, at SEIU “Universal Health Care Forum”); “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care system” (2003 at AFL-CIO event)

Frank (D-MA): “I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single-payer; that’s the best way to reach single-payer” (7/27/09)

Schakowsky (D-IL): “And next to me was a guy from the insurance company, who then argued against the public health insurance option, saying ‘it wouldn’t let private insurance compete’ — that ‘a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.’ He was right! The man was right!” (4/18/09)

They are correct, of course. The term “single payer health care” is just a fancy way of referring to a health care system in which each and every health care transaction goes through a middle man — and in which that middle man is the government (yes, the same one that runs the DMV, the Post Office, Medicaid, and myriad other offices and programs you’ve come to despise dealing with over the years).

Further, Frank and Schakowsky are correct about the “public option” being the best way to get to a single-payer system, for two reasons.

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If you are in an individual health insurance plan, you cannot get a new one, period. You must go to the government-run Health Information Exchange, which is just an arm of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, who will control every plan in the Exchange, and every detail of every plan.

Its BIG BROTHER (in the Orwellian sense) health care.

Here is what the second Investor’s Business Daily editorial on the same subject said:

Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking member on Ways and Means, told us that “any existing plan will not be able to enroll members.” There will be “a prohibition,” the Michigan Republican said, “on enrolling individuals in private health plans” after the bill becomes law in 2013.

It was also confirmed by Ways and Means staff director Cybele Bjorklund, who, in response to questions from Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin during a committee markup session, admitted last week that insurance providers “cannot create new policies outside of that window outside of the exchange.”

The exchange is not a private marketplace as IBD points out:

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Talk about over-reaching: Chairman Waxman’s bill will make private health insurance illegal for individuals.

I know, it can not be! But it is, here is the editorial from the Investors Business Daily:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

So why would the Dems make individual health insurance illegal?

To force everyone into government run health care, of course.

President Obam’s promise of “if you like your health plan, you can keep it” is a complete lie.

Is it any wonder that 10 Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee have told Chairman Waxman to go pound sand?

Update by Jeff: Perhaps this comment will shine a bit more light on the import of this issue.

WHO SHOULD HAVE CONTROL over your medical care: your family doctor, or a bureaucrat you’ve never met whose sole job is to look out for the government’s financial bottom-line?

That question, which is the subject of today’s AOL Hot Seat poll, is being debated in court right now, as three states are currently seeking a ruling from a federal judge that the final say in an individual’s medical treatment lies with the government, not with that patient’s doctor.

In March, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama joined in an appeal of a 2008 U.S. District Court ruling that a patient’s physician was better positioned – and better qualified – to make decisions about that patient’s medical treatment than state bureaucrats.

The case centers on Callie Moore, a disabled teenage girl living in Georgia. A stroke Callie suffered in utero left her suffering from multiple conditions, including cerebral palsy and mental retardation. For the last decade, she has received around-the-clock in-home nursing care for her medical conditions.

IN 2007, THOUGH, the state of Georgia cut coverage of Callie’s in-home care by 15%, from 94 hours a week to 84 over the objections of her attending physician, who was intimately familiar with her case and her needs. State officials (who were not medical professionals) cited disagreement with the attending physician about just how much care Callie needed as the primary reason for this reduction in care.

Callie’s mother filed suit in 2007, arguing that the state had no right to contradict the orders of her personal physician and limit her treatment. However, because Callie receives her medical treatment under Medicaid, the joint federal-state administered health coverage program for low-income individuals and families, Georgia officials argued that Callie’s care was subject to rationing, as state bureaucrats’ need to ensure Medicaid resources were allocated “fairly” superseded her doctor’s care prescription or her personal medical needs.

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