Obamacare and Rationing

From Hugh Hewitt's blog, Rich Stowell on Obamacare and rationing:

I know a thing or two about rationing from my military service. In the Army, everything is rationed. We all get a prescribed number of the same uniform items, meals are not unlimited, and every Soldier receives the same equipment, whether he uses it or not.

On deployments, Soldiers are even given “ration cards,” to track the purchase of certain items. As a non-smoker, my tobacco rations went unused by anybody.

For supporters of Obamacare, it is utter ignorance to entertain any illusion that the government won't ration what it has dominion over.

The Congress, for example, appropriates tax dollars. With every spending bill, the public monies are rationed out to various agencies and projects. Rationing is such a basic fact of life that we take it for granted.
....
As a commuter, I ration my mileage and fuel. If gasoline were unlimited, we may not think twice about driving all over creation when it suits us. Except that we don’t have unlimited time. Each of us rations his/her time every day, choosing how it would be best spent.

So when the Democrats say that the government, now ultimately in charge of the health care system, won’t somehow try to apportion at least some of those dollars or services, they are either lying or stupid.

We are now shackled by a system that, at the direction of various government agencies, will force everybody to buy a health plan, make businesses supply insurance to their workers, and cut benefits from previously-enacted entitlements.

The president himself has touted that a crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse will save billions. Nobody defends waste, but what is wasteful to Mr. Jones might be needful from Mrs. Smith’s point of view. Who cares if the Joneses and Smiths are using their own dollars? Now they are Uncle Sam’s dollars, so he gets to decide what is needful. It may not be a death panel, but few could argue that cutting back on services isn’t a form of rationing.