Tag Archives: Nationalized Health Care

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Obama appoints NHS-loving socialist as Medicare and Medicaid Czar

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Story here from CNS News.

Excerpt:

Dr. Donald Berwick, nominated by President Barack Obama to run Medicare and Medicaid, praised the government-owned British National Health Service (NHS) for not letting their health care system “play out in the darkness of private enterprise.”

[…]Berwick, who said that Britain “chose well” in establishing a health care system completely controlled by the government, contrasted the NHS with the American health care system, which he derided as being dominated by private doctors, hospitals, and insurers instead of the government.

The article is filled with alarming quotes from Berwick making it clear that he is a committed socialist. Just like Obama!

In fact, the American Spectator reports that he LOVES the UK health care system. (H/T Not ECM, because he recommends you not read my blog any more just because I like courting more than video games)

Excerpt:

For example, the BBC — hardly a hive of free-market zealots — has run a series exposing routine neglect of elderly patients in a major NHS hospital.

[….]In addition to sheer neglect, NHS patients are often subjected to incredibly unsanitary conditions.

[…]Many British patients never endure such conditions because treatment is denied outright as too expensive.

[…]The NHS is run by health care bureaucrats who, like Donald Berwick, regard the free market as ethically dubious and economically inequitable. Yet the “morally superior” and “fair” medical system they have created for the U.K. produces results that give new meaning to the epithet, “Perfidious Albion. As David Gratzer recently pointed out, “British cancer outcomes don’t just trail U.S. results; they rival those of Eastern European nations.” This isn’t hyperbole. A 2008 study showed that cancer survival rates in the U.K. don’t come close to those of the United States. American men, for example, have an 80 percent better chance of surviving prostate cancer than do their English counterparts. The study revealed similar disparities in comparative survival rates for victims of breast, colon and rectal cancers.

[…]Heart patients subjected to the tender mercies of the NHS also fare poorly. The Telegraph reports that British heart attack victims are much more likely to die after being admitted to a hospital than similar patients in the United States and other developed nations: “Around 6.3 per cent of patients who have suffered a heart attack have passed away within 30 days of entering a British hospital — significantly higher than the 4.3 per cent average.”

I snipped ALL THE HORROR STORIES out of the excerpt. Yes, even the one with the DECOMPOSING RAT IN THE OPERATING ROOM. You better click through and scare yourself silly from ever voting for the Democrats again. And don’t let your friends vote Democrat, either. Would you like to have health care from the DMV or from Amazon.com? In the UK, you get it from the DMV. And that’s where Obama is taking us.

UPDATE: Here’s another NHS horror story. Maybe it came from ECM and maybe it didn’t. I guess we’ll never know.

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Single-payer health care is falling apart in Canada

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Story from Reuters. (H/T Hot Air via ECM)

Excerpt:

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada’s provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, kicked off a fierce battle with drug companies and pharmacies when it said earlier this year it would halve generic drug prices and eliminate “incentive fees” to generic drug manufacturers.

British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit — an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee.

And a few provinces are also experimenting with private funding for procedures such as hip, knee and cataract surgery.

It’s likely just a start as the provinces, responsible for delivering healthcare, cope with the demands of a retiring baby-boom generation. Official figures show that senior citizens will make up 25 percent of the population by 2036.

Ooops. Maybe that whole taxpayer-funded abortions for free thing was not such a good idea for a welfare state like Canada. In their defense, they only have a Ponzie scheme for health care, their retirement system is solid compared to Social Security.

Investors Business Daily explains:

Western dabbling in socialism has shown that public health care systems funded by other people’s money are unsustainable. The provision of “free” care is a losing game. Because it is perceived to be free, demand in such a system will outstrip supply. Costs can’t help but rise.

[…]In 2009, health care spending in Canada devoured 40% of the provincial governments’ budgets and expenditures have been rising by 6% a year. At that rate, or even half that rate, it wouldn’t be long before the provincial governments did nothing but fund health care. The Ontario government says health care spending could consume 70% of its budget within just 12 years.

Some of the blame can be placed on an aging population. Reuters reports that one-fourth of Canada’s population in 2036 will be senior citizens. But it’s the nature of the system, its near monopoly and its ambition to serve every Canadian, that makes it unsustainable. It has grown from 7% of provincial governments’ spending in the 1970s to the 40% it is today merely because it is a government giveaway that people cannot get enough of.

The Cato Institute compares Canada to bankrupt Greece here.

In different parts of Canada, things like in vitro fertilization, abortions, and sex changes are well-funded by the government. They actually restrict the number of doctors in order to ration billing the government for services. Many people cannot even find doctors! People just go on waiting lists for months and months and they die on waiting lists waiting for brain cancer treatment, after having paid into the system for their whole lives! (Because abortions are more important than brain cancer in Canada – it buys more votes, you know).

Related movies on Canadian health care

A Short Course in Brain Surgery:

Two Women:

The Lemon:

And one more video from On The Fence Films called “Dead Meat“.

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How well does government-run health care work in Australia?

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From the Sydney Morning Herald. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Westmead Hospital is cancelling surgery at four times the rate the Health Department considers acceptable, and waiting times are so long some surgeons are refusing to add new patients to their operating lists.

About 8 per cent of elective surgery patients at the flagship Sydney University teaching hospital had their operation cancelled on the day of surgery, due to a shortage of post-surgical beds.

[…]Those cancellations – which Professor Fletcher said affected up to half of patients for some types of surgery – were not formally recorded.

[…]Hospitals in western Sydney have suffered staff freezes and bed cuts due to debts that last year reached $26 million.

This is what happens when you take the profit motive out of health care. If there is no way to make money, then there is no free capital that flows into the industry. If there is no free capital, then the only way to expand is by raises taxes. If taxes are already too high, then the only way to control demand is by using waiting lists. And naturally the people in power will favor the special interest groups who vote for them with faster access to treatment.