Death Panels by any other name must smell sweeter when the Republicans are in charge. Just ask Indiana’s Governor Mitch Daniels:

Mitch Daniels edged into the debate over rationing health care Friday, saying there will “never be enough money” for every American to have access to all modern life-saving technology. “We all want to live forever, we want everything done for us to live forever,” the Indiana governor told a small group of health reporters.

Of course there will never be enough money for health care when tax hikes for the rich and corporate tax loopholes that allow most corporations to avoid paying any income taxes are off the table. There will never be enough money for health care when private for profit health insurance companies, which operate much more inefficiently than universal health care coverage in other countries, are already rationing health care on the basis of what people can afford.

“In America, we strictly ration health care. We’ve done it for years,” says Dr. Arthur Kellermann, professor of emergency medicine and associate dean for health policy at Emory University School of Medicine. “But in contrast to other wealthy countries, we don’t ration medical care on the basis of need or anticipated benefit. In this country, we mainly ration on the ability to pay. And that is especially evident when you examine the plight of the uninsured in the United States.”

The same health care system costing us more money in health care costs than any other developed nation because it is so inefficient, even after health care reform. The same crappy health care system that would improve immensely and cost us billions of dollars less if the United States adopted a single payer system or other form of universal health care.

According to U.S. Congress’ General Accounting Office, administrative savings from a single payer reform would total about 10% of overall health spending. These administrative savings, about $100 billion annually, are enough to cover all of the uninsured, and virtually eliminate co-payments, deductibles and exclusions for those who now have inadequate plans – without any increase in total health spending.

The same lousy US health care system that could provide better care and outcomes if private companies were not involved in “managing our health care system” as they are today.

Insurers are gutting mental health benefits, denying needed care, cutting payment rates, and insisting on the cheapest – and often not the best – form of therapy.

HMOs have sought to profit from Medicare and Medicaid contracts by providing substandard care, and even perpetrating massive fraud. The largest Medicare HMO, IMC in Florida, induced thousands of the elderly to sign over their Medicare eligibility and then absconded with $200 million in federal funds. Nationwide, Medicare HMOs provide strikingly substandard homecare and rehabilitation to the disabled elderly. Tennessee Medicaid HMOs have failed to pay doctors and hospitals for care. […]

HMO payment incentives increasingly pressure primary care physicians to avoid specialty consultations and diagnostic tests. In this coercive climate, errors of judgment will inevitably occur, denying patients needed specialty care, while specialists are idle. In some areas of the nation (eg. New York City and California) market imperatives have led to growing unemployment of physicians, while huge numbers of patients don’t get adequate care. […]

Reasonable people have known for years that a single payer or other universal health care plan would be cheaper, fairer and more economically sustainable. The developed nations with a lower infant mortality rate than the United States all employ some form of a universal health care plan. People in those countries tend to live longer</a. than those of us in the United States.

However, for some reason, the benefits of universal health care are not apparent to Republicans like Mitch Daniels. This is the same Mitch Daniels who ended the collective bargaining rights of Indiana’s public employees by fiat in 2005 because he who believed we need to privatize most government functions (after all, that worked out so well for us in Iraq and Afghanistan where fraud and abuse by private companies hired by our government was rampant). Many of Daniel’s privatization schemes failed miserably, like this one.

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels announced Thursday that the state will cancel its $1.34 billion contract with IBM to automate the application process for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits. […]

Clients, their legislators and advocates had complained that the new modernization system, which took away in-person caseworkers, loses documents, misses telephone appointments and has lengthy hold times.

Daniels said he canceled the contract because IBM did not make satisfactory progress to improve services as required by a corrective action plan.

Gee, what a surprise.

However that hasn’t stopped Gov. Daniels from arguing for more privatization of government services. Or for suggesting we austerity measures that would cut Medicare and Social Security benefits and raise the age for eligibility for those benefits. No wonder he’s being considered as a potential GOP presidential contender in 2010. He clearly prefers to promote the welfare of corporate persons over the welfare of real, living, breathing, not rolling in dough persons.