Government-provided health care: cancer sufferers are denied treatment because it’s deemed too expensive, but their taxes are used to pay for a 16-year-old’s sex-change operation.
Homeopathic A&E – a sketch from the fourth episode of series three of “That Mitchell and Webb Look”, a British television sketch show.
It’s all in the name, as one blogger realized all the way back in August:
As the Democrats in Congress are struggling to get the rest of America on board with their proposed health plan, I can’t help but wonder if a better name wouldn’t help. Take a page from the Republican playbook. They give bills names that are loaded with meaning and are difficult to vote against without looking bad. Who would vote no on something called No Child Left Behind? Who wouldn’t support the USA Patriot act? So I propose that the Senate rename their bill the American Legislative Insurance For Everyone act, a.k.a. the American LIFE act.
Who could vote against the American LIFE act? What Senator wants to be up for reelection and hear their opponent ask “Why did you vote against American LIFE, Senator?”
I bet they wouldn’t be praying for a miracle in Massachusetts today had they heeded this advice.
Oh, wait:
I floated the idea on Twitter and while many people thought it was a good idea, others rightly pointed out that the word “For” is often omitted from acronyms, so Republicans could just call it the American LIE act.
Those pesky Republicans, always getting in the way of a good lie.
A good summary of Obamacare by Robert Tracinski. Making health insurance more expensive while forcing you to buy it, turning health insurance into another welfare program, restricting you choice of coverage, and gutting the health insurance industry - what’s there not to like?
From the Haiku Pundit:
Single payer means
no payer if the payer
doesn’t want to pay.
But that will never happen. Honest. Because we all know the government never runs out of money.
Dr. Mark J. Perry links to this short video.
And if you think that is ridiculous, wait till the government is done grabbing it all.
If you wonder why the Democrats keep pushing a budget-busting program that most of the people oppose, ask the simple question: Who benefits?
Collectivist politicians have much to gain by increasing the size of the dependency class. The fundamental political purpose of State-controlled health care is to transform much of the middle class into the lower class. The economic damage from spending trillions of dollars on a monstrous new government program in the middle of a recession is a feature, not a bug. A middle class dependent on the benevolence of the State for its health care will become less troublesome, less independent, and less able to begin the climb into the upper class through small business formation. Fewer small businesses means fewer working poor rising into the middle class.
In other words, more people who will vote Democrat forever.
A European warns against patterning America’s health care after the European example at a time when some countries in the Old World are moving in the direction of competitive health insurance markets to keep their systems affordable.
(Via Dr. Mark J. Perry.)
That would be the U.S.
Plus, from JWF’s comments:
Prior to 1946, the US had won the Nobel for Medicine only 4 times. After 1946, most nations outside the US had altered their medical coverage toward a socialist “free care” system, and the training and support was also altered dramatically in this fashion. Since 1946, the US has won the Nobel for Medicine a shocking 48 of the next 63 years!
How can the worst health care system have such an amazing differentiation from the rest of the world? Prior to altering their systems toward one that is government run, many European nations competed regularly with the US. Afterward, there is no competition of any major significance – the US dominates innovation, productivity, and advancement. Yet we are told that we’re failing.
Those Nobel Prize folks, normally so co-operative (with picks like Arafat, Al Gore, Paul Krugman), aren’t helping their liberal comrades in the U.S. by giving so many prizes for medicine to Americans.
For now, in Britain:
Parents are being threatened with having their children taken into care after questioning doctors’ diagnoses or objecting to their medical care.
John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP, who campaigns to stop injustices in the family court, said: “Very often care proceedings are used as retaliation by local authorities against ‘uppity’ people who question the system.”
Cases are emerging across the UK:
The mother of a 13-year-old girl who became partly paralysed after being given a cervical cancer vaccination says social workers have told her the child may be removed if she (the mother) continues to link her condition with the vaccination.
A couple had all six of their children removed from their care after they disputed the necessity of an invasive medical test on their eldest daughter. Doctors, who suspected she might have had a blood disease, called for social services to obtain an emergency protection order, although it was subsequently confirmed that she was not suffering from the condition. The parents were still considered unstable, and all their children were taken from them.
A single mother whose teenage son is terminally ill and confined to a wheelchair has been told he is to become the subject of a care order after she complained that her local authority’s failure to provide bathroom facilities for him has left her struggling to maintain sanitary standards.
Maybe those British parents just need to be good subjects and stop questioning the government when it takes away their children. Government knows best, don’t they know?
(Via Eye On Britain.)
Over 83 years old and in one of the Netherlands’ government-run hospitals? They’ll let you die with dignity by not giving you any treatment – or food – until you free your bed for the next in line. A Dutch woman at the Orlando Tea Party tells the story of her mother’s last weeks:
The 85 year-old Dutch woman fell in a health care facility and hit her head, was put to bed, and then became non-responsive. She received no medical care, no treatment whatsoever because she was “over 83 years.” Then she was put on morphine so she could “go with dignity,” and also because they needed her room for other patients. It took her 3 1/2 weeks to die from euthanasia as a result of the Netherlands’ government run health care system.
Here is the video:
Paul Lewis survived a free fall from 10,000 feet after his parachute failed to open properly, and now you can see a video of his little adventure recorded by his helmet camera.
(Via Link Collection.)
What’s amazing in this story is how many Brits in the comments to the linked article say people like Lewis should not be treated by the country’s “free” healthcare system because their injuries result from unnecessary high-risk activites, and that they should be required to get private insurance before the government allows them to take part in skydiving or similar sports. Interestingly, there’s no discussion of refunding such people the healthcare taxes they’ve paid over the years.
If you want to create a shortage of something, let the government manage it:
Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.
The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets – even a caravan – went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.
Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.
Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:
- 63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
- 117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
- 115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
- 399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.
Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.
Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.
One woman gave birth in a lift while being transferred to a labour ward from A&E while another gave birth in a corridor, said East Cheshire NHS Trust.
Others said women had to give birth on the wards – rather than in their own maternity room – because the delivery suites were full.
Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply – up 20 per cent in some areas.
This is happening despite the tripling of NHS funding since 2007.
More NHS news: Man collapses with ruptured appendix - three weeks after NHS doctors ‘took it out’. Question: What organ did they take out? He can’t get an answer.
When the government runs things, you can count on things like this to happen:
A paedophile who admitted sexually assaulting a girl of 11 is getting Viagra on the NHS [Britain's government-run universal healthcare system].
Roger Martin, 71, who has a 30-year history of sex attacks, is prescribed the libido-enhancing drug by his doctor.
Judge Nicholas Coleman revealed the scandal as he sentenced Martin for his latest crime.
(Via Cafe Hayek.)
Update: Take a closer look at the Oregon Health Plan to see the future of Obamacare. And at Oregon’s physician-assisted suicide program that the state offers to those it deems too expensive to treat.
Harvard economist Greg Mankiw calculates that the health surtax on the rich proposed by the Democrats would bring marginal tax rates for top earners in a typical state to about 55 percent.
The Democrats might as well have named their health care takeover plan ”Massive Job Losses Plan”.
Does history offer any proof of government’s ability to efficiently manage anything even remotely as complex as this?
(Click the picture to enlarge.)
(Via Maggie’s Farm.)
The National Health Service, Britain’s socialized health care system, is telling kids they have a right to a good sex life - and should exercise this right every day to strengthen the heart:
The NHS is telling pupils they have a ‘right’ to an enjoyable sex life in a leaflet being sent to schools.
It encourages them to consider an ‘orgasm a day’ as a way [to] reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke.
And if they can’t get sex, the leaflet says children should consider masturbation.
The advice appears in guidance circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers. It says experts have for too long concentrated on the need for ’safe sex’ and loving relationships – while ignoring the main reason people have sex, for enjoyment. . . .
The leaflet has come to light just a week after it emerged that a £6million initiative to reduce teenage pregnancies more than doubled the number of girls conceiving.
The Government-backed scheme tried to persuade teenage girls not to get pregnant by handing out condoms and teaching them about sex. But a study in the British Medical Journal found girls on the scheme were ’significantly’ more likely to fall pregnant than other girls.
Now criticism is focused on the new leaflet, entitled Pleasure, which has been drawn up by Sheffield primary care trust.
Under the heading ‘an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away’, it says: ‘Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes [of] physical activity three times a week.
‘What about sex or masturbation twice a week?
[The leaflet's author said] that as long as teenagers are fully informed about sex and are making decisions free of peer pressure and as part of a caring relationship, they have as much right as an adult to a good sex life.
Plus this:
Two years ago a charity said masturbation techniques should be taught to children in sex education classes.
The Family Planning Association suggested that pupils should be shown explicit videos of masturbation at school – but family values campaigners said the proposal was nothing more than the promotion of pornography.
Little wonder that hundreds of thousands of Brits flee the country every year.
A blind British man named Martin Jones had a fragment of his own tooth implanted into his only eye to hold a lens made from his skin. Now he can see his wife for the first time because he married her after he had lost his sight.
Not everything he sees he likes, though:
“The first car I saw when my sight was restored was a Smart car and I couldn’t stop laughing – I’d never seen one before and I thought it had been chopped in half.”