Tag Archives: Single-Payer

Videos

Hot Air and Michelle Malkin post new video of Michele Bachmann’s town hall

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I am happy because lots of major blogs are saying nice things about my favorite representative Michele Bachmann. (You can see all my posts on her here)

In a new video from a town hall meeting, Michele slaps down an idiot heckler.

She starts out by trying to inform the audience of the perils of nationalizing health care, citing the recent story about the 4000 NHS patients who were denied hospital beds for giving birth. So they ended up having their children in all kinds of nasty places.

The Daily Mail wrote:

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…

‘It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown’s tripling of spending on the NHS.

‘Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units.’…

The NHS employs the equivalent of around 25,000 full-time midwives in England, but the Government has promised to recruit 3,400 more.

However, the Royal College of Midwives estimates at least 5,000 more are needed to provide the quality of service pledged in the Government’s blueprint for maternity services, Maternity Matters.

At the same time almost half of all midwives are set to retire in the next decade.

Well, as soon as Michele cites this story, some silly heckler starts to babble something about how similar things happen in American hospitals, like the hospital in MN. So Michele immediately shuts him down with this: “I’ve given birth here probably more times than you, sir.”

Click through to see the video either on Michelle Malkin or on Hot Air. And notice the positive reactions from Michelle Malkin and Ed Morrissey.

Also, click here for a picture of Michelle Malkin AND Michele Bachmann. Aren’t they lovely?

News

Blazing Cat Fur’s horrific experience with single-payer health care in Toronto

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I spotted this story from Blazing Cat Fur while browsing at The Blog of Walker.

Excerpt:

I suppose I should have been tipped off by the fact that the surgeon who performed my Mom’s angioplasty last Friday couldn’t be bothered to check up on her afterward. This same surgeon discharged her Saturday morning from TGH, Toronto General Hospital – by phone.

Tuesday afternoon my Mother suffered a “False Aneurysm“, this it was explained, is a fairly common side effect caused by the anti-clotting medication she has been prescribed. However the Brit’s inform me that “The most common cause of pseudoaneursym is femoral artery puncture during cardiac catheterisation.”

[…]She was scared, in a great deal of pain and very weak by the time she hit TGH’s ER, though commendably the paramedics had stabilized her – this was 6:20 PM. The paramedics stayed with her, monitoring her vitals and answering my questions as best they could until well after their shift ended at 7. At 8:30 PM, in order to release the paramedics my 84 year old Mother was officially admitted to TGH. Admission consisted of moving her from the ambulance gurney to a hospital gurney and pushing her 20 yards down the corridor, next to the homeless guy with the festering sores on his legs. The attentive care of the paramedics was replaced by – nothing.

We waited over an hour for a resident to finally stop by and inquire what the matter was. My shocked stare, which arose after she asked in all seriousness, if the angioplasty had been a success, caused her to retreat and summon the physician on duty. Wisely the attending doctor suggested that a physical examination was in order, she then disappeared with the resident in tow. A nurse was dispatched who informed us that my Mother would have to be undressed for the examination. Since this Angel of Mercy made no offer to assist I took it upon myself to undress my bedridden mother in a public corridor, in full view of the passing parade of visitors, patients and staff – truth be told the homeless guy was pretty discrete or at least preoccupied.

It goes on, and on, and on.

This is one of the saddest things I have ever read.

And it happens in England, too

Here is a Daily Mail story that I spotted over at The Western Experience. (And also ECM sent it)

Excerpt:

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.

The Western Experience also linked to the story of a man who had his appendix removed by the NHS – TWICE!

I knew that the left was concerned about the doomsday overpopulation myths, but this is ridiculous!

Further study

Learn more about health care policy from my previous posts on health care:

Polemics

Christians destroy their own religious freedom by supporting single-payer health care

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Muddling Towards Maturity linked to a Chuck Colson column which makes an essential point about how allowing a secular government to control health care is bad for Christians who want to live authentic Christian lives in the public square. Muddling writes, “Chuck Colson tells the story of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic college that won’t allow abortion, sterilization, and contraception to be covered by its employees’ health care plan.”

Excerpt:

[The Catholic Church] teaches that abortion, sterilization, and contraception are immoral. So it makes sense that a conservative Catholic college would make sure that its health plan doesn’t cover such practices.

Well, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a different word for Belmont Abbey College: “sexist.”

Using reasoning that could only be concocted by a consummate bureaucrat, the director of the agency’s Charlotte office has said that denying contraception is sexist “because only females take oral prescription contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women.”

The EEOC stepped in because eight college employees complained about the lack of coverage. The EEOC has now ordered the college to find a resolution. Even though North Carolina law protects religious institutions from having to cover contraception, abortion, and voluntary sterilization, the case could end up in the federal courts.

Colson also talks about how Catholic adoption agencies were forced to close as a result of state control of medical care provision. Catholic organizations do a ton of good in the world, so I find it appalling that so many Catholics voted for Obama. If you marginalize the worldview that produces the good works, you don’t get to keep the good works. The good works were rationally grounded by the good worldview.

This is a MUST-READ for those of you who believe that big government programs, like single-payer health care, are compatible with Christianity. If you want to put the needs of the poor above the gospel, that’s fine. But, in my view, Jesus put the gospel above the needs of the poor.

Have a look:

1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2″But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

6″Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

(Mark 14:1-9, NIV)

And you can see this problem in many other areas as well, such as welfare, hate crime bills and the removal of conscience protections. Few Christians, and certainly not those who support single-payer health care, would even recognize the imposition of the government’s vision of morality and purpose on individuals as fascism. Even homeschooling Christians sometimes support big government secular socialism which can lead to banning homeschooling.

Many Christians voted for the most pro-abortion President ever, and for the most anti-family, anti-marriage, anti-child President ever. I think this is a consequence of the church’s complete unwillingness to connect what goes on in the church with anything objectively real outside the church. We tell people stories that make them feel certain emotions, and they use that emotionalized conception of Christianity to decide who to vote for.

2008 voting broken by religious groups

2008 voting broken by religious groups

(Click for larger image)

I think what is really happening here is that Christians who prefer single-payer health care on “moral grounds” are either 1) trying to justify stealing money from their neighbors to pay for their own risky, irresponsible decisions, or 2) trying to embrace trendy, popular policies that put them in a favorable light with the secular neighbors. Either way, it’s a loss for God. Doing good is the job of free individuals, not the job of a secular, socialist government.