Medical Madness

There are sound arguments against a nationalised health service. I might think they are a little redundant given the success of some nationalised systems, but there are reasonable, honest challenges to the entire idea.

So why have some of the crazier right wing Americans decided to invent the concept of "death panels" (which basically actually exist in some private healthcare providers!!) and Fox News dragged on Daniel Hannan, a Tory MEP who doesn't agree with his parties stance on the NHS, to make an attack upon our NHS despite the American system NOT being the NHS and despite the NHS actually not being all that bad.

Why can't the Republicans, conservatives and others who oppose this new health care plan choose some reasonable people to represent them other than those who don't even know Stephen Hawking is British(and didn't turn out too badly!) and Sarah Palin who doesn't know much at all. I particular like her statement:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

We here in Britain have gone far further down the nationalised health care route than America WILL EVER go. Our children, our elderly and our disabled are treated BETTER than a healthy adult (for good reason!). We do not deny Down Syndrome children treatment because they may not be able to "contribute" to our society as much as others (and that is a pretty debatable position, as Palin says it's very subjective hence why we don't let Doctors do that!). Having a nationalised health service does not mean we live in a Communist state. We still have private healthcare too, my other half had his, botched, treatment for a tumour at a private hospital a few months ago.

Criticise, fight, do anything you want about these proposals but don't lie, distort or scaremonger. The issue is far too important than that.

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