The other day I was reminded of an old joke: What do you call a liberal who’s been mugged?

The answer? A conservative.

If that’s true, it cuts both ways.  Take the debate over health care reform, for example. Conservatives who argue that the United States has the best health care system in the world are, by and large, people who’ve never had to worry that if they go in for a simple physical they might not be able to pay their monthly bills.

I know whereof I speak. When I was fired from my job last year, I had to go out and buy my own health insurance. I chose the most economical option. Six months later, I went in for some blood tests and ended up having to pay $650 out of pocket. It was almost the equivalent of one month’s rent.

I ended up paying by credit card. And thankfully, the tests were all negative. But since then, I’ve often wondered what would happen to me if I did develop a serious illness. Recently, for instance, I learned that if you’re among the 47 million Americans who have no insurance whatsoever, a CAT scan will cost you about $2,500. I can scarcely imagine what the bill would be for major surgery and an extended hospital stay.

But this is of no concern the fat-cat Republicans who rant on a daily basis about the dangers of socialized medicine. The health care system works for them, and they can’t possibly understand why everybody’s not happy with it.

The trouble is, according to recent polls, they’re having some success in their effort to convince people that the Obama health care plan would be the first step down a slippery slope toward Socialism.

It’s nothing of the sort, of course. Obama has never pushed a single-payer system run wholly by the government. He’s simply advancing the notion that the public and private sectors should work together to ensure that all Americans have access to the health care they need, regardless of their ability to pay.

If this sounds like an unprecedented departure from the American way of life, consider this. In 1944, President Roosevelt proposed what he called a Second Bill of Rights. He argued, among other things, that every American should be entitled to, quote, “adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.”

Two decades later, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson made similar statements. But in the last 40 years, we’ve abandoned this vision.

It makes no sense, when you think about it.

Most Americans accept the notion that every citizen is entitled to free education, not to mention protection by the police, the fire department and the military. If we expect the government to prepare us for gainful employment and to protect us from muggers and terrorists, why is it so radical to suggest that we should also have a government-funded system to help us cope with disease?

I, for one, don’t think it is.

Not all the objections, of course, are based on a fear of “socialism.” Much of the debate has centered on the fear that Obama’s plan—and for that matter, any other option involving the government—would result in rationing. In particular, opponents paint scenarios in which the government will “pull the plug on grandma” because treating the elderly is not worth the expense.

I have no doubt that many people who advance this argument are sincere. My friend and journalistic role model—Nat Hentoff—has written that the prospect of rationing has caused him to fear a presidential administration for the first time in his life.

“I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him,” he wrote in a column for realpolitics.com. “I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama’s desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It’s already in the stimulus bill signed into law.”

The trouble is, as one expert noted on NPR, we already ration health are. “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. (Emphasis added.) And that is especially evident when you examine the plight of the uninsured in the United States.”

In his recent speech about healthcare, President Obama put a human face on this abstraction: “One man from Illinois,” he said, “lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it. Another woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne. By the time she had her insurance reinstated, her breast cancer had more than doubled in size. That is heart-breaking, it is wrong, and no one should be treated that way….”

In short, right now, as you read these words, insurance companies are deciding whether the quality of life of countless men and women merits funds to keep them alive. Why is it OK for insurance companies to make such heartless decisions but frightening to consider the prospect that we might give the government the power to do so?

One possible response to that question is that there are many private insurance companies but only one government. Right now, people who are shot down by one company can always go elsewhere. Well, that sounds good in theory—but the truth is, insurance companies all tend to operate by the same rules. There might as well be just one.

Lately, Obama has been ridiculed by the right for asking critics if they have any better ideas. The implication is that to do so is a sign of weakness—and no wonder. For decades the right has tried to ram its ideologies down the throats of the American public without a hint of willingness to compromise.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, it’s high time that Obama’s critics got out of the road if they can’t lend a hand. If they don’t, the blood of that man in Illinois, that women in Texas and countless other uninsured Americans will be on their hands.

Read more essays at thetreehousemagazine.com.