Britain’s nationalized health care system is so wonderful we’re trying to emulate it. Only it’s not wonderful. It’s atrocious. Even by Britain’s standards, though, this story is amazing:
The 22-year-old was not given vital medication after an operation at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, according to his mother.
A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police who are investigating Mr Gorny’s care.
…His mother, Rita Cronin, says he needed drugs three times a day to regulate his hormones, but he was not given them by hospital staff.
She said he became very dehydrated but his requests for water were refused and nurses called in security guards to restrain him when he became angry.
He became so frustrated that he rang the police from his bed to demand their help but officers were assured Mr Gorny was fine.
She said nurses assumed he was just badly behaved.
Mr Gorny’s cause of death was determined to be dehydration.
But don’t you Britons worry, because “new procedures [have been] introduced to ensure that such a case cannot happen in future.”
The only procedure capable of ensuring government competence is…woops, sorry, there is no such procedure.
The manner in which that patient was treated is only possible in a system where the patient is not the customer. Keep that in mind as the left argues that we need even more regulators and insurance agents in between you and your doctor, rather than fewer.
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Ezra Klein makes some good points on health insurance.
But just so the world doesn’t get out of order or hell freeze over, Stephen Spruiell takes him to task for this post.
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Don Boudreaux takes the President down in an open letter:
Leave a commentDear Mr. Obama:
CBS radio news this morning ran a clip of one of your recent speeches. In it, you criticize insurance companies because they “ration coverage … according to who can pay and who can’t.”
My first thought was “not exactly; coverage is rationed according to who pays and who doesn’t.” Ability to pay isn’t the same thing as actually paying, and what insurers care about is the latter. Many folks – especially young adults – have the ability to pay but choose not to do so. They get no coverage.
But further pondering of your point leads me to look beyond such nit-picking to see fascinating possibilities. Not only insurers, but all producers who greedily refuse to supply persons who don’t pay should be set aright. Now I’m sure that you don’t ration the supply of the books you write according to any criteria as sordid as requiring people actually to pay for them. But our society is full of people less enlightened than you.
For example, the typical worker rations his labor services according to who pays and who doesn’t. That must stop. Oh, and supermarkets! Every single one rations groceries according to who pays. Likewise with restaurants, clothing stores, home-builders, furniture makers, even lawyers! You name it, rationing is done according to who pays. Indeed, my own county government has been corrupted by this greedy attitude: if I don’t pay my taxes, the sheriff takes my house – effectively booting me out of the county merely because I didn’t pay for its services.
Preposterous!
I look forward to your changing this selfish and unfair system of rationing that for too long now has kept Americans impoverished.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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The president of the Utah Senate and the speaker of the Utah House of Representatives recently took to the pages of the Washington Post to lay out a “modest proposal.” While their ideas are modest in a historical context, the sad irony is that what they propose is quite radical for the modern era. Simply put, they want the federal government to butt out and let Utah take care of Utah.
The two Utah legislators, Michael G. Waddoups and David Clark, propose to have the state take over completely several programs, such as education and Medicaid, which are currently influenced by both state and federal policy. They argue that the strings which come with federal dollars for these programs are onerous and promote inefficiency. They’d rather those dollars be kept in the state to begin with, instead of first being funneled through federal bureaucracies, only to return with strings that threaten state sovereignty.
Hear, hear.
I’ve written in the past about the destructive consequences of allowing the federal government to abuse its tax and spending power in order to cajole states into adopting its preferred policies. Such a system wastes money, distances tax payers from their local governments, and undermines the federalist system which has served us so well.
Utah isn’t the only state talking about restoring federalism. Alabama Governor Bob Riley recently signed a resolution reaffirming the long-ignored Tenth Amendment. While not legally binding, the resolution ought to serve notice that the states are not longer rolling over to federal demands. Other states have similar measures at various stages of the legislative process.
It’s about time that state lawmakers stand up and say that they’d rather not take federal dollars at all. They deserve support, because this is not an easy position to take. Too often the states are complicit in the erosion of their own authority as they run hat-in-hand to the federal government for more money. Perhaps now they are realizing that sacrificing long-term governing authority for immediate political expediency is a bad bargain.
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Democrats scramble to ram through health care takeover before facing Townhalls:
Democrats are racing the clock to pass health care reform ahead of a wave of Tea Party-driven town hall meetings planned for the spring recess — the kind of gatherings that nearly derailed the package last August.
But there’s a big difference this time around. Last summer, Democrats were encouraged to hold the town hall meetings, and they were blindsided by the backlash, which was recorded and promoted in countless YouTube clips. This time around, they have a good idea of what’s coming — and they’re lying low.
“There’s not been the same push as there was in August to encourage members to do town halls,” said Stephanie Lundberg, spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
But that isn’t stopping Tea Party groups, as well as former House Republican Leader Dick Armey’s outfit, FreedomWorks, from holding their own meetings and trying to coax lawmakers into attending.
“We’re about to ratchet it up,” said Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party Patriots organizer and FreedomWorks volunteer outside Atlanta. “You’re about to see the passion that we saw during the August recess.”
I wouldn’t count on many of the weasels having their courage to face constituents and explain their betrayal.
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A lot of phrases are being thrown about in the midst of the current health care debate. Perhaps the most common is the sentiment that we need to control the costs of health care.
Both right and left agree that it is desirable to have health care cost less. But controlling costs? That implies centralized authority, that someone will wrangle greedy health providers and force them to lower costs. It’s a decidedly statist vision. Yet even those offering free market solutions often adopt such language. This is a mistake. While it might seem acceptable in the proper context to say that “competition would control costs,” it subtly cedes moral ground to the statists.
Such totalitarian language is common in America. It’s routinely asserted that our presidents are elected to rule the country or manage the economy. Both of these assertions are absurd, or ought to be, if taken literally.
There are probably many other great examples. What other totalitarian terms or phrases have infiltrated and proliferated throughout our vernacular?
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Thanks to Heritage:
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Who are the most conservative and liberal members in Congress? Every year National Journal scores the votes of all members to answer that question. For 2009:
The 10 Most Liberal Senators
- Sherrod Brown (tied 1st)
- Roland Burris (tied 1st)
- Ben Cardin (tied 1st)
- Jack Reed (tied 1st)
- Sheldon Whitehouse (tied 1st)
- John Kerry
- Frank Lautenberg
- Barbara Mikulski
- Chris Dodd
- Dick Durbin
The 10 Most Conservative Senators
- James Inhofe
- Jim DeMint
- Jim Bunning
- Tom Coburn
- James Risch
- John Thune
- John Ensign
- Mitch McConnell
- Richard Burr
- Jeff Sessions
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The grand health care summit was supposed to trap Republicans. Democrats would show the nation how intransigent and unreasonable those pesky obstructionists on the right were being as they prevented passage of free health care for all. Instead, Republicans came prepared and ran substantive circles around the Democrats, who were too busy reading phony, heart-string pulling letters from “constituents” to talk about actual details of legislation. The President seemed irritable and petty, and did little to help his case.
Despite accomplishing nothing, the President is determined to ram his unpopular bill through anyway. All the talk is about reconciliation, which will avert a need for a 60 vote majority in the Senate, but the real story is in the House. The Democrats just don’t have the votes right now.
Can that change? Certainly. If House members realize their toast no matter what they do come November, they may just ram it through as one last thumb in the eye to the American people. But right now, ObamaCare is looking like it needs to be fit for a coffin.
Does this mean any health care reform is dead? Only if Democrats want it to mean that. If they wake up, return hat in hand and have a real summit to discuss bipartisan solutions, some useful things can get done. Don’t get me wrong, the best solutions are ones that Democrats will never consider, but there are productive things on which both sides can agree. But that will mean Democrats have to first abandon their bad bill which no one wants. I’m not holding my breath.
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When Democrats sang a different tune on Senate rules:
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
