I forget where I heard it mentioned last night (I think it was Bill Maher) but I wanted to highlight a huge fallacy in the burgeoning Republican talking points about Obama’s health care plan.

Right-wing talking heads have already started to claim that Obama’s plan will mean that health care decisions would be taken out of the hands of doctors and patients and given to the government.

Leaving aside some minor parts of this nonsense (e.g. Obama is not advocating for a single-payer system), the key thing that people need to realize about this is that health care decisions are already out of the hands of doctors and patients. It’s the health insurance companies who decide what procedures a patient is authorized to undergo. Doctors sometimes have a say in the matter but are routinely overridden.

So, the next time some nutter tries to scream at you about the evils of socialism and nefarious government bureaucrats, simply remind them that people are already being screwed by private companies in a system that has, for the most part, failed horribly (i.e. we pay way more in this country for health care and receive substandard care as compared against any other modern democracy). The private sector has failed us for decades. It’s time to try something new.