More Fake Freedom

Sure, it's great that everyone now has access to health care---or at least, cannot be denied health care. But what happens when you live in an area where there are few if any health-care providers? That's yet another dilemma that the Goldberg Act doesn't solve, and people who live in the poorest parts of rural America---where a sizable majority of the population is poor and elderly, and where access to public transit is minimal or nonexistent---are going to find that the promise of universal health care rings rather hollow when you can't get to a real-life doctor. There were policy fixes for this that could have been incorporated into the law---allowing nurse-practicioners to perform more doctoral functions, or loosening visa requirements for foreign-born doctors, or increasing federal aid to medical schools to admit more students---but one or more of the "stakeholders" objected, so the problem wasn't solved. Then again, that was to be expected when the task of fixing America's health-care mess was outsourced to the same people who created the mess in the first place.

---Baron V