Can anyone have a conversation with a supporter of Bernie Sanders’ single payer healthcare plan without being told how great the British program is? It’s their shining hospital sitting on a socialist utopian hill, and they want it for us.
Spoiler alert: There’s very big trouble brewing in Great Britain. Their collective paradise is having “financial difficulty”. It seems the powers that be, in this case the ominously named Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) “took action” because of a dramatic, looming “health and social care funding gap”.
Their first step, partial solution, is to deny so-called “non-urgent surgery” to patients who are obese or smoke. If person has a Body Mass Index of 30 or more they’ll have to reduce their weight by 10% within 9 months before undergoing a surgical procedure. Smokers have to stop for 8 weeks and then be breathalyzed before they even get a referral.
At first blush, this surely sounds great to a whole lot of folks. They support their position with pious, self serving rationales, but ignore the fact that fellow Brits, despite having paid big tax money into the system, are discriminated against because they are too heavy (22% of the population) or smoke (15% of the population).
This is the classic tactic used when statists running socialist programs, run out of other people’s money. They isolate and go after the easiest targets first. Obese folks and smokers have few defenders. When they’re characterized as a financial drain on the healthcare system, individuals who feel they, themselves present no such threat, find culling these outcasts from the hearty herd increasingly less problematic.
Which makes this kind of denial of services a dangerous, sinister precedent. What group, unfortunate enough to be part of some medical minority, will be the next one bureaucrats single out and demand they suffer, “for the greater good”?
We can’t really be sure, except to say there will be another class of people made to sacrifice. The reason can be found in simple economics. Idyllic socialism writes checks that can only be cashed at the expense of those who’ve fallen out of favor with the state
By advancing the single payer, slippery slope now established in Britain, unelected masterminds may soon begin screening new clusters of individuals, potentially at risk for a lifetime of very expensive healthcare.
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Some of those designated for assignment in newly formed, high liability castes might include, but not be limited to: Downs Syndrome children & adults, the severely autistic, those with a family history of cancer or genetic diseases, ALS patients, alzheimer’s sufferers, drug addicts, and the infirm elderly.
For Bernie shills who dismiss the possibility of something like that ever happening here, we’d recommend they review exactly why excluding a specific class of patients from treatment is roaring ahead in Great Britain. Three of the biggest reasons are:
- An aging population demanding more medical care
- Staff shortages of MD’s and nurses that cannot keep up with demand, while record numbers of GP practices close their doors.
- Unhealthy lifestyle factors such as increased use of alcohol and drugs, combined with poor diets and not enough exercise, topped off by growing numbers of overweight children.
Does any of that NOT mirror what we see in the USA today?
So while Sanders’ supporters incessantly lecture us on “fairness” they continue without irony, to heap praise on a health system beginning it’s dystopian decent into the survival of the fittest.
First they came for the obese and I said nothing. Next they came for the smokers, and I said nothing. Then they came for the disabled and sickly seniors, and I said, “Feel the Bern”.
The front page of today's London Daily Telegraph. Welcome to what single payer is really like. pic.twitter.com/hYS6cMs3Fl
— Ari Fleischer (@AriFleischer) July 7, 2017
Bernie and his supporters have no concept of facts or reason. The object is not to try to convince them, but to fight them every step of the way.
From “Association of American Physician & Surgeons” AAPS:
Single Payer IQ Test – Question 3:
Under single payer, who will do the work?
Answer: Younger and less experienced physicians, foreign physicians, subservient physicians, non-physicians—or possibly no one.
Having an insurance card doesn’t help if there are 50 people ahead of you in the waiting room—and the doctor is not in. Single payer is supposed to remove the barrier of having to pay for care, but none of the proposals create extra doctors. And of increased demand there can be no doubt. [1]
There are six questions associated with this topic on their website at aapsonline.org/hcriq.
I totally agree that this was one of your best columns ever… and that’s saying a lot!
The only medical professional whose support for single payer socialized medicine would be consistent with his medical philosophy is someone like Dr. Josef Mengele… that is, a government paid “physician” whose job is TO KILL PEOPLE deemed to be of no use to, or enemies of, THE STATE.
Bolshevik Bernie should either move to Venezuela and get his medical conditions treated there…
…or maybe go back to doing something he knows about… like writing rape pornography for underground “magazines,” as he once did in the 1970s.
Awesome article that highlights the sick dichotomy visible in those who desire Government to do “good” for society, actually accomplishing evil. As Winston Churchill said so eloquently, “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
“But..but..We are America, we can do it better..”, say our misguided clueless children. “We have to learn from the Brit’s mistakes” To sad…to Lol. The mistake happened 60 years ago !
Stupendous article ! One of your best.