Want an example of why government healthcare in the U.S. is a dangerous proposition? USA Today has a lengthy story on kidney dialysis and how new research is showing that having dialysis treatments more often seems to be keeping patients alive and healthy longer than the traditional thrice weekly treatments. The piece also sadly shows that the U.S. has higher rates of early death of dialysis patients than other western nations.

Why is that, you might wonder? It's because Medicare won't pay for more than three treatments a week so the national standard has become thrice weekly because that is what government will pay for. Not only that but government won't pay for medical services ancillary to dialysis causing patients to succumb to other problems that often accompany or presage kidney failure.

Barry Straube, chief medical officer at the federal Centers for Medicare & Medcaid Services, says 25 million Americans have kidney disease, but Medicare benefits don't kick in until patients are at the most advanced stage. Many patients with earlier-stage kidney disease aren't treated for high blood pressure or diabetes, which cause two-thirds of kidney failures.

In other words, medical care is rationed by government to keep down costs based on a one-size-fits-all system. This rationing kills patients sooner than necessary and stifles life-saving innovation in treatment.

The good thing is that we currently have other choices in care that might help patients live longer, more fulfilling lives.

Once Obamacare is passed and those choices are eliminated, we will end up with low quality care from government just as we do in the case of kidney dialysis in this country. And the agencies Obama puts in charge of determining who is allowed to get care and just how much they will be allowed to receive might be considered a "death panel," at least where it concerns the early deaths of America's dialysis patients.