It’s getting close to the time when the American public will have to “pay the piper.” That adage squarely fits with the coming of Barack Obama’s “National Healthcare” system. Donald Berwick, Obama’s radical socialist appointee to the position of “U.S. Healthcare Czar,” commented that he had a “romantic attraction,” (I’m paraphrasing), to the British National Healthcare Service which the British are now admitting is an abysmal failure. I was looking for a psychological term that would describe Berwick’s “sexual fantasy” with the failed British system – there is none. That said we can assume that Berwick is suffering from delusions much like his boss Obama and the rest of the radical left. Like the eugenicists of past and present Berwick seems incapable of realizing the human toll that will be exacted under “healthcare reform,” where cost will be considered over care. However, I think that perhaps Berwick might better serve us if he was the first in this administration to apply for a lobotomy under our new impending healthcare system. This would of course provide a much needed relief considering Berwick’s sexual “fetish” for the failed British system. We might also hope his fellow travelers on the left would also take advantage of that procedure because lets face it, given their socialist delusions they would have nothing to lose. Just my opinion….William McCullough
“The worst of all deceptions is self deception.”
Plato
National Health Service Is Coming To America
By Cal Thomas – Washington Examiner, July 29, 2010
Trust me you’ll be good as new!
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told a group of liberal activists meeting in Las Vegas they shouldn’t worry about not getting the single-payer provision in the new health care law. “We’re going to have a public option,” Reid said. “It’s just a question of when.”
Remember the objections conservatives and many Republicans raised during the debate about government-run health care and the danger of eliminating private health insurance, despite its many flaws?
Recall that Britain’s National Health Service was frequently cited as an example of where the U.S. health system might be headed: coverage for all, but with lower quality, long waits for major surgery and denial of care when the government decides the procedure is not “cost effective.”
Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model can somehow fare better than Britain’s had better consider this recent headline and story from London’s Sunday Telegraph: “Axe Falls on NHS Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer care, maternity, pediatric services at risk.”
Anyone who believes a U.S. health care system based on the NHS model can somehow fare better than Britain’s had better consider this recent headline and story from London’s Sunday Telegraph: “Axe Falls on NHS Services; Hip operations, cataract surgery and IVF rationed; Cancer care, maternity, pediatric services at risk.”
Rationing? Oh yes, and it is something the unconfirmed, recess-appointed U.S. health care czar, Donald Berwick, strongly favors.
British government leaders had promised to protect frontline services. The Obama administration also made similar promises in order to win enough support from members of Congress, most of whom never read the bill before they voted for it.
Here’s what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model, according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph: “Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.” Never has “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” sounded more callous.
Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency department services would also be cut.
Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the Telegraph, “including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.” Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts “astonishingly brutal.”
She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word again) hip and knee operations. “These are not unusual procedures,” she said. “This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people in pain.”
What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top officials (including Berwick, who has lifetime health coverage given to him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.
This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the spine of every American: “Doctors across the country have already been told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given ‘prior approval’ by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made on a ‘case by case’ basis.”
When cost, rather than the value of life, becomes supreme, rationing will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite protestations from those who favored Obamacare that “death panels” would not be part of the equation, you can count on them.
They will, of course, be called something else. We wouldn’t want to disturb any remaining moral sensibilities we might have.
It has taken the NHS 62 years to get to this point. America’s journey should be a lot shorter given the declared goals of Harry Reid and Donald Berwick.
It is more than ironic that this is taking place in the year when Britain is observing the centenary of the revered nurse Florence Nightingale. Given the prevailing attitude toward the value of human life and its care, her replacement might be the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Hemlock, anyone?
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/National-Health-Service-is-coming-to-America-1004460-99479739.html#ixzz0v4hdfbc8
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/National-Health-Service-is-coming-to-America-1004460-99479739.html#ixzz0v4hCLNip
If memory serves me correctly it was sometime in the decade of the 70′s when new York State shut down its “mental health hospitAls” throughout the state due to a budgetary crisis that had the state on verge of bankruptcy. We here in the NY, NJ metro area remember the blaring headlines in the New York daily News, “Washington to New York: Go to hell.” To this day the streets of New York City are rife with those who cannot fend for themselves humanely; the only respite from urine and fecal matter on the streets and in the subways came during former mayor Rudy Giuliani’s crackdown on crime and filth in the streets of New York. Thankfully he is gone and the current socialist billionaire posing as mayor, Michael bloomberg, is doing a superb job of restoring the atmosphere and environment on the streets of New York to a combination of Calcutta and the world of Mad Max. . Instead of housing these mentally ill in facilities that would take them from their living hell to a purgatory of sorts, these poor unfortunates are given government checks so that they may have access to the same alcohol and drugs like the rest of us. Once the money in “Obamacare” dries up or dissappears which group will be the first to feel the lash from the death panels, those on the streets; are they the group who will give us the most bang for the buck or the taxpaying citizen unfortunate enough to have pre existing and life threatening conditions if uncared for become a death sentence but represent a bad investment to the system? The way things are shaping up I would probably move to England.
Goo, don’t feel bad. when the “Great communicator” was Governor of California he did the same thing. Parts of downtown Lost Angeles smells like a urinal as a result – some communication….