My belief is that no private-sector entity can survive over a long period of time competing against the government. The public option will be written by politicians. It will be generous. Nobody in my business worries about the bottom line.

— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

So, conservatives hate socialized medicine because it will cover everything and private industry will not be able to compete.

No, wait a minute–I thought they were against it because with socialized medicine there couldn’t possibly be enough money to go around, meaning we’d get rationing and “Death Panels”:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Talk about playing both ends of the field. Of course, both are wrong. We’ve had Medicare for more than 40 years and it hasn’t gone the way Graham is saying such plans would; as for “rationing,” Graham is more correct in that government plans would be more generous than private insurance–but wrong in his contention that this would break the bank. By removing the profit margin for private corporations, you can give more care and save money. Instead of paying huge amounts to private insurers, you simply pay a lot to the government. More for less, and it works. Ask the Rest of the Planet.

And Stephen Hawking, by the way, is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. That’s Cambridge, England, not Massachusetts. Hawking, as Josh Marshall points out and anyone who knows anything about this esteemed man knows well, has lived in England all his life. Somehow he avoided the Death Squads regularly sent out by the Socialized Death Care Ministry to kill of anyone with a disease. Pretty nimble for a guy in a wheelchair.

Oh, wait! Obama is set to present Hawking with the Presidential Medal of Freedom tomorrow! It must be a secret plot to euthanize him! Someone warn him!

When, by the way, will the media stop pretending that these people are not lying imbeciles?