In our ongoing consideration of the threat posed by President Obama’s pledge to radically “reform” the American health care system, we have asserted that a nationalized health care scheme poses a threat to the infirm and elderly. But some have challenged our contention that Obama’s utopia will inevitably lead to rationed health care.

That argument comes despite plenty of available evidence from those in Canada and Europe who are now in bondage to such a system. But in liberal land, evidence never trumps ideological beliefs.

Perhaps such persons will believe their own president.President Obama announced yesterday that he and his agents will begin to reduce Medicare costs by penalizing hospitals who readmit patients within 30 days. The White House contends that this arbitrary rule could save $25 billion over 10 years.

The American Hospital Association responded to the action by issuing a public statement, reported by CNSNews: “There are a number of factors beyond the hospital’s control that whether a patient is readmitted, including the natural course of the disease, the limited availability of post-acute and ambulatory health care services, poverty among some hospital’s patients, and a lack of community-based social services.”

So why is the dapper, new Uncle Sam, so concerned about giving everyone in America free and easy health care, suddenly playing Uncle Scrooge and attempting to prevent patients from returning to the hospital if necessary? Money, of course. Just last week this same Administration announced that both Social Security and Medicare were, essentially, broke.

So even as Obama seeks to exponentially grow the government’s intrusion into health care, he must cut existing benefits to try and keep the wheels glued to the bus. From this vantage point, it is difficult not to see that a plague of irrationality has infested Washington. And it is that irrationality and political whimsy which will ultimately prove Obama’s health care plans to be a far more deadly plague on the American people.