Every so often I run into someone, usually a doctor or someone else in healthcare who should know better, who just loses control when faced with a proposal they don’t like about health reform, and it’s usually got the words "single payer" and "Canada" involved in close proximity.  The always entertaining Chris RangelMD had such a moment last week, and unleashed a load of bile on Steffi Woolhandler following her interview with the NYTimes. Chris’ piece was filled with so many inaccuracies and crass misunderstandings about health care in the US (including in his native Texas), taxes in Europe, rationing, etc, etc, etc, that it required a response almost equally bilesome. As that type of thing is not the kind of cool analysis I try to provide at TCHB, I sneakily hid my response in Alwin’s entry about Chris’ piece at his code: theWebSocket blog I’m hoping that I’ll stir Chris into action over there too, and maybe get some other lefties like Ross at the Bloviator or single-payer advocate like Graham at Gross Anatomy to get stuck in too.  Then Sydney at Medpundit might get involved and the bar-room brawl really might get going into the silly season.  Graham incidentally found the the link to the article on rationing in Texas that I mention in my comment over at Alwin’s blog.

Meanwhile at THCB I’ll be trying to continue the highbrow discussion I’m having with DB’s Medical Rants about health care quality.  Of course if I mention the word malpractice that highbrow reserve could all fly out the window . . . . .

Finally and OT for this blog but as both Medpundit and RangelMD lead with it I’ll make an exception, ask yourself the following question: If you had access to at least $750,000 in cash, a false passport and a huge price on your head, wouldn’t you have shaved off the mustache, lost the beret, snuck over the border and been on the first plane to the south of France like this guy and this other guy did it?