Maybe it's a sign of things to come: a commission given the task of coming up with recommendations for reforming health care in Colorado says that it ... needs more money.

Health reform panel faces woes, an article in the Rocky Mountain News, reports on the latest in the workings of the Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform. Its chairman says that the group has gotten one-tenth of the funding it should have. And the proposals being touted by the commission aren't any better.

On a recent panel discussion, one participant actively called for at least one government program to be accepted as not health care, but welfare: "John Sackett ... suggested changing Medicare from an entitlement program to a welfare program. 'Those who are of means are going to have to contribute to the solution, not the problem.'"

A proposal for a single-payer system is still a strong possibility. My disgust was mixed with amusement when I read about the logical leap offered by one of its advocates. He "argued that doctors would remain in the private sector and that single-payer would reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies."

Forget for the moment the point about "reducing bureaucratic inefficiencies." If doctors are in a "single-payer system" in which the payer is government, are they really in the private sector?