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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Obama Pick Fawns, Starry-Eyed, Over NHS Health Care Perfection |
| 2010-05-13 |
| President Obama's nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) love Great Britain's single payer health system. A speech he gave in 2008, started with Berwick saying, “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.' "You could have had the American plan. You could have been spending 17% of your gross domestic product and making health care unaffordable as a human right instead of spending 9% and guaranteeing it as a human right. "You could have kept your system in fragments and encouraged supply driven demand, instead of making tough choices and planning supply. "You could have made hospitals and specialists, not general practice, your mainstay. "You could have obscured, you could have obliterated, accountability, or left it to the invisible hand of the market. Instead of holding your politicians ultimately accountable for getting the NHS sorted. "You could have let an unaccountable system play out in the darkness of private enterprise, instead of accepting that a politically accountable system must act in the harsh and admittedly sometimes very unfair daylight of the press, public debate and political campaigning. "You could have a monstrous insurance industry of claims, rules, and paper pushing instead of using your tax base to provide a single route of finance. "You could have protected the wealthy and the well instead of recognizing that sick people tend to be poorer and that poor people tend to be sicker, and that any healthcare funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth, from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition redistributional. "Britain, you chose well." I wonder if Dr. Berwick is willing to make the same assertion to the common person in Great Britain who has to participate in the system he lusts after like a pedophile at a kindergarten roundup. I wonder if he would be willing to tell Dorothy Simpson that Britain chose well. Dorothy suffered from “an irregular heartbeat and is at increased risk of a stroke.' She was denied treatment because she was too old. Would Dr. Berwick tell 76 year-old Elizabeth Green Britain chose well? After searching for a dentist and coming up empty, Green resorted to pulling her own teeth. Mrs Green, a former chef, said it was made plain to her that if she could pay for treatment she would have been welcomed. “I feel so angry,' she said. “I've worked all my life and paid taxes and then when I need help I can't get it.' How about the parents of 3 year-old Ella Cotterell? She had her heart surgery cancelled three times in one month because of bed shortages. It was three out of 57,000 surgeries that were cancelled in 2008. Tell it to Clara Stokes. She was was left “dehydrated, hungry and lying in her own faeces in a hospital bed for six hours.' She was 84. Dr. Berwick, tell George Clowes Britain chose well. His nine year-old son Tony cut his finger on his bicycle chain. The operation to stitch his finger resulted in Tony's death because medical equipment was reused to save money. Tell it to the parents of eight year-old Louis Austin. He died when NHS staff diagnosed his diabetes as swine flu. Tell it to Katie Brickell, who “first asked for a [pap] smear test at the age of 19 but was told she didn't need one until she was 20-years-old. A year later, when she returned to her doctor, she was told that the age had been raised to 25. At 23, she was diagnosed with an incurable cervical cancer.' Tell it to the 1,000 Brits sitting on a waiting list for one dentist in one town. Tell it to the people sitting on a waiting list for over a year. Tell the families of the 1,200 patients who die needlessly each year because bureaucrats put cost cutting ahead of patient care. Tell it to the families of the 5,000 elderly patients who die each year “because they are not put in intensive care beds for monitoring after their operations.' In 2008, The Sun reported on the vermin and pest infestations that plagued NHS hospitals: The sickening figures reveal two-thirds of trusts in England had problems with rats, biting insects and fleas. Six out of 10 had suffered cockroach infestations. Four out of five had reported mice and ants on the wards. One in 20 had problems with maggots.Drain flies infested operating theatres at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. I wonder if Dr. Berwick will visit all these hospitals and tell the patients that Britain chose well. It's easy to get dressed up, go to a dinner or meeting and tell a bunch of folks they are doing a super job and Marxism kicks butt. It's a lot tougher to look at reality at admit the low level of quality socialism has created. Here we may reign secure; and in my choice / To reign is worth ambition, though in hell: / Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. / The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. -- Satan, in Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose |
| #2 I propose everyone in the Obama admin get their health care from directly from the British NHS. The cost of the plane tickets would be worth it and we could save a fortune on the return fare. |
| Posted by: ed 2010-05-13 15:58 |
| #1 Be Afraid, the NHS is a killer. If it comes to a choice between violence or accepting an NHS, I suggest blood on the streets. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2010-05-13 11:32 |