UPDATE: Guess which nation banned Michael Moore’s Sicko, an ode to Cuba’s ‘superior’ healthcare system?
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…Castro’s government apparently went on to ban the film because, the leaked cable claims, it “knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.”…
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Under socialist healthcare policies, everyone will have equal acess to free healthcare. No longer will money or insurance coverage dictate who gets good healthcare – everyone can potentially enjoy it! Equality utopia!
So what could possibly be bad about free healthcare?
The problem is precisely that it’s free. Everyone can take advantage of the system for any of the most mundane, noncritical ‘health issues.’
Instead of those who can afford it having access to good healthcare, no one will have good healthcare as the standard of the over-exploited system drops precipitously.
As a result, the entire sytem degrades as countless petty-problem healthcare-seekers flood the system. Hey, it’s a free buffet – grab all you can! It turns medical services into the tragedy of the commons.
To wit: In a capitalist system, you don’t visit the private clinic whenever you have a minor Panadol-grade headache, or pricked your finger. That would cost you your hard-earned $$$$$ to treat something so minor.
Whereas in a socialist ‘fair and equal’ system, if healthcare is free then by all means – demand that George Clooney (E.R. star) treat your grumpy mood today, or go for that several-thousand-dollar liposuction-boobjob-Botox treatment you don’t have to pay for.
Cuba-style healthcare disaster (not the fictional version in Michael Moore’s totally punked Sicko)…
…Is where America is headed if HillaryCare Clinton has her way with totalitarian socialist policies like SCHIP. To quote her: “We’re going to take things away from you”.
And here’s the result of already-instituted socialist healthcare in several nations, just so you know for sure why really smart people like Lee Kuan Yew are so opposed to socialist policies.
Socialized healthcare is just a prolonged, insiduous version of what Communist states have been doing all along.
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All excerpts below via Moonbattery, who has been documenting the slide of medical care into the dark pit of entitlement-mentality.
(NOTE: There’s a minor glitch with the links that seems to happen randomly and occasionally… The links open only half the time from my site.
Not a frequent problem, but if you have trouble opening them, just right click on the link, choose ‘Copy shortcut’ for IE or ‘Copy Link Location’ for Firefox, open a new window and paste the http into the address bar. That works all of the time.)
Socialized Medicine Around the World – ITALY: Need a mammogram? You’ll be able to get plenty done in the meantime — the average wait is 70 days. GREAT BRITAIN: About 20 percent of patients with treatable colon cancer at the time of discovery are considered incurable by the time treatment is finally available.
British Socialized Medicine Rakes in Surplus While Cutting Services - £1.8 billion surplus from taxpayers’ money while refusing to pay for treatment for taxpayers because ‘it’s too expensive’.
Surviving Socialized Medicine - Video of a brain tumour sufferer, who of course cannot get treatment from the socialized healthcare his tax money pays for.
Socialized Medicine Sends Canadians over the Border for Care – More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.
Transsexual Murderer Robert Kosilek Is Still Whining – Taxpayers paying tens of thousands for this incarcerated criminal’s sex-change treatments wasn’t luxurious enough.
Cleaning Up from Socialized Medicine – British woman injected with cleaning fluid, leaving her wheelchair-bound with nerve damage
Patients Forbidden from Buying Life-Saving Drugs under U.K.’s Socialized Medicine
Socialized Medicine Turns Ambulances into Waiting Rooms – Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss British Government targets of treatment within four hours. Solving the wrong problem, as usual…
Long Waits for “Free” Healthcare in Sweden - Wait more than 90 days for the most basic of treatments, despite 250 million spent on the system.
Muslim Medics Refuse to Follow Hygiene Rules - Did your surgeon wash her hands before digging around your guts? Or is that haram?
Moonbat Family Planning Searches for New Extremes of Depravity - Have a child for a homosexual couple, and receive £15,000… Not counting taxpayer-funded expenses of another £15,000. No wonder the NHS is so underfunded and overworked with such frivolous expenses as this and virginity reinstallations (see below).
British Doctors: Withhold Treatment From the Unhealthy - Especially old people who have already paid their lifetime’s taxes to the NHS.
Homosexuals Are Spreading Deadly Drug-Resistant Bacteria
Moonbatty Blast From the Past – Doctors in trouble for refusing to give a Pap smear to screen for cervical cancer… In a MAN. So how do you examine a man’s uterus?
Moonbattery Wreaks Havoc on Australian Ambulance Service:
Melbourne’s $16 million-a-year ambulance dispatch system is forcing paramedics to race through streets to treat nose bleeds, apply sticking plaster and tend to compulsive hand-washers.
Ambulance officers say a computer dispatch program that fails to distinguish between a heart attack and a stubbed toe sends them on thousands of unnecessary high-speed runs each year.
Ambulances have been sent to people with in-grown toenails and sprained ankles — at $860 a trip.
A PATIENT whose lip had been cut on a pizza crust. A MAN with a paper cut. A BOY with a grazed knee.
Their union says ambulances are sent to most jobs to eliminate the risk of litigation.
Socialized Medicine Doesn’t Work in Japan Either – A woman died after an ambulance crew had to contact 30 hospitals before one would finally admit her, 2 hours later.
Expert Confirms Michael Moore “Just Repeating Government Propaganda” on Cuban Healthcare
John Edwards: Exploitative Threat to Medicine
Taxpayers Forced to Re-create Criminal’s Ear – Among other things, he faces 10 charges of burglary. He says he wants a new ear so that he “won’t be reminded of my failures.”
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino Goes to War Against Affordable Health Clinics
British Doctors Cover Up Death Due to Hospital-Acquired Infections – “The hospital was dirty. I found a used syringe under the bed, soiled cotton wool pads left on his floor and there were human faeces smeared on the door. Looking back, it is no surprise he caught a superbug. Edwin didn’t deserve to die simply for trusting the NHS to make him strong again.”
Two More Casualties of British Socialized Medicine – Two new mothers died in a British hospital from identical infections.
Comrade, Heal Thyself – Millions of people with arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part of a Government plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget.
British Weight Crisis: People Are Too Fat and Skinny
Obey if You Want Medical Care – Gordon Brown has announced that Britons may be required to stop smoking, conform to exercise regimens or attain a specified weight before receiving the ‘free’ healthcare that is largely responsible for their crippling tax burden.
One in Ten Harmed While in British Hospitals
More Dhimmitude in British Hospitals – Overworked nurses have been ordered to stop all medical work five times every day to move Muslim patients’ beds so they face towards Mecca. The lengthy procedure, which also includes providing fresh bathing water, is creating turmoil among overstretched staff on bustling NHS wards with a huge Muslim population in Dewsbury.
British Taxpayers Reinstall Muslim Women’s Virginity – Public funds replaced 24 hymens between 2005 and 2006. Most patients are of ‘ethnic origin’. “In some cultures they like to see that the women will bleed on the wedding night. If the wife or bride is not a virgin, it is a big shame on the family.”
Socialized Medicine Suffers a Setback in Oregon
New York Forced to Choose between Doctors and Lawyers – One medical malpractice carrier faces a $500 million deficit. To cover it would require raising rates that are already extremely excessive by $50,000 a year, thus driving out of the state any doctor who could find work elsewhere.
A Preview of Our Medical Future, Compliments of Cuba – Brave Cubans come forward with video furtively taken in real Cuban hospitals.
British Nanny State Using Imaginary Obesity Crisis to Justify Totalitarianism – “The obesity epidemic cannot be prevented by individual action alone and demands a societal approach. Preventing obesity is a societal challenge, similar to climate change. It requires partnership between government, science, business and civil society.”
Socialized Medicine Reduces Brits to Pulling Their Own Teeth – As many as six per cent had treated themselves because they could not find a dentist. Some said they took out their own teeth or fixed broken crowns with glue.
Another Brit Forced by Socialized Medicine to Pull His Own Teeth – A man described how he pulled out seven of his own teeth because he was told to wait for an appointment to see an NHS dentist. He said he was forced in agony into taking the drastic action because he was given a three-week wait by staff at his local NHS dental surgery.
Britain’s Socialized Neonatal Service on the “Brink of Collapse” – The report found many neonatal units were forced to refuse new admissions for considerable periods of time because of staff shortages. Mothers and babies may be forced to travel long distances in search of a unit with the appropriate facilities to care for them, the charity said.
Breck Girl Wants to Suppress Medical Advertising – After all, if a new medicine becomes available that might improve or even save someone’s life, we wouldn’t want patients to know about it any sooner than necessary.
Corzine Defies Federal Government to Advance Socialized Medicine – Corzine’s come up with his own rules that advance socialism by handing out federal money to families making as much as 350% of the poverty rate.
Socialized Medicine 101 – For a mere $3,100, students in the MBA and MS International Business programs can earn credit by traveling to Venezuela to watch Hugo Chavez choke the last gasps of freedom out of that country’s healthcare system.
Year Wait For Prostate Cancer Surgery Under Socialized Medicine – Socialized medicine in Canada.
Doctor Visits Mandatory Under Edwards’ Socialized Medicine
Washers For Half a $Million Apiece – This story suggests one of the many reasons healthcare will become extravagantly expensive once it becomes ‘free’ under socialized medicine.
Giving Birth Under Socialized Medicine – A Canadian woman has given birth to extremely rare identical quadruplets. The four girls were born at a US hospital because there was no space available at Canadian neonatal intensive care units. Health officials said they checked every other neonatal intensive care unit in Canada but none had space.
New Shoes and Socialized Medicine Team Up to Kill- A new pair of shoes caused 60-year-old Peter Catterall to develop a weeping sore on his toe. This might have been no big deal, had Catterall not lived in Britain, where medicine is under the control of a socialist bureaucracy. After being dismissed with assurances that the sore would heal by itself, he came down with blood poisoning and died of massive organ failure.
Socialized Medicine Death Sentences in Scotland – Cancer patients are still waiting up to seven months for treatment. Patients are supposed to be treated within 62 days of urgent referral. In the worst cases, sufferers were kept hanging on for 220 days.
Jennifer Bell, Yet Another Casualty of Socialized Medicine – Jennifer Bell, a 22-year-old from Thorpe End, Norwich, complained to her doctor for eight months about her severe headaches, nausea, stiff neck, and diarrhea, only to be told that she suffered from stress. At long last the doctor/bureaucrat got tired of her complaints and referred her to a neurologist, who put her on the 13-week waiting list for a ‘relatively urgent’ MRI. Jennifer died of her undiagnosed brain tumor three days before the MRI was scheduled to take place.
Another Socialized Medicine Horror Story – Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux — a proven cancer drug. She received one inscrutable form letter after another from her Canadian insurance company, rejecting her claim for reimbursement.
British Bureaucrats Nix Pain Medication – National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence have decreed that abatacept, shown to cause a dramatic improvement in 40% of patients with severe rheumatoid arthritis, is not cost-effective.
Heidi Sakkestad, Mutilated Refugee From Socialized Medicine – The minor surgery went horribly wrong, and Ms. Sakkestad woke up with her jaw hanging 8 to 10 millimeters to the right of its normal position. Five subsequent surgeries over the next four years only made the problem worse, and she ended up with several broken jaw bones.
Socialized Medicine Perk: Free Goodies For Addicts – Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellent will recommend that the National Health Service offer free TV sets, iPods, and best of all, vouchers that apparently can be redeemed for drugs to heroin and cocaine addicts if they manage to stay clean long enough to pass a drug test.
Moonbat Medicine – 813 studies of the impact of meditation (including Yoga, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, sniffing incense) on health problems like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and substance abuse found that studies favoring meditation as medication are inconclusive due to poor methodologies and other problems.
Healthcare Under Dems: A Sinking Schip – Democrats want to raise the Schip budget to a staggering $60 billion. Nobody has to be particularly poor to qualify. In New York, a family of four making $82,600 is poor enough to have someone else pay for their healthcare under Schip. Nor do you have to be a child to cash in. In 2005, Minnesota spent 92% of its Schip loot on adults.
Britain’s Nanny State Confiscating Overweight Children – “In my practice, I can think of about 10 or 15 cases in which child protection action has been taken because of obesity. We now constantly get letters from social workers about child protection due to childhood obesity.”
Murderer Demands Free Sex Change – And he gets it. Search for Robert Kosilek nearer the top.
Get Paid to See the Doctor – Going socialized medicine one better, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to pay people to go to the doctor.
San Francisco Socializes Medicine – San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has voted unanimously to provide all residents with healthcare, including derelicts and illegal aliens. The optimistic estimate is that it will cost $200 million per year, which will be sucked from the jugulars of taxpayers and local businesses. Firms will be forced to cough up as much as $180 per month per worker.
Doctors or Lawyers? – When it comes to the lucrative medical malpractice racket, the first to pay are doctors. Between 1975 and 2003, malpractice insurance premiums rose 406%. Unsurprisingly, some of this outrageous expense is passed along to us, contributing heavily to the 525% rise in the cost of medical care over the same period. doctors are forced to practice “defensive medicine,” by which the objective is not the health of the patient, but to avoid giving ambulance chasers anything they can twist into malpractice.
Study Finds 40% of Medical Malpractice Claims Are Groundless
Medical Moonbattery – Tanya Bainbridge, a 57-year-old former British sailor who used to be named Brian, was treated at taxpayer’s expense to a £20,000 sex-change operation in 2001. Now he/she has been approved for a £2,500 procedure to have his/her tattoos removed because they make him/her feel ‘unladylike.’ Meanwhile thousands of British nurses and doctors are losing their jobs in cuts due to the financial unworkability of socialized medicine, and Claire McDonnell, a 33-year-old mother of three, has been refused Herceptin to treat her breast cancer because it’s too pricey. The cost would be £2,500 — the same amount taxpayers will be shelling out to make Bainbridge feel more ladylike.
Pushing All the Wrong Buttons -
A baby boy died after an untrained doctor pressed the wrong button on his bypass machine because it was a less “horrid” colour than the other, an inquest heard yesterday.
Four-month-old Thomas Smith was on a heart and lung bypass machine when Simon McGuirk, a cardiac surgical registrar, accidentally turned it off.
Mr McGuirk said that he did not know whether to press the orange or blue buttons to restart the machine, so opted for the blue. It sent the machine into reverse, sucking blood from Thomas’s body. He died a short time later.
On Your Dime: Sex Changes For Criminals – Four Wisconsin inmates have turned to the ACLU to help them fight a newly enacted state law that would keep them from receiving treatment for their rare medical disorder. Their condition? ‘Gender Identity Disorder,’ which is treated with hormone injections to develop female characteristics.
Socialized Medicine Degenerates Into Shamans and Dark Hallways – The NHS now employs shamans, who presumably cost less than doctors. They “use complementary therapies to help those with mental health difficulties.” Other creative treatments include the taxpayer-subsidized Emotional Freedom Technique, a form of therapy by which “subtle energies” are adjusted by “tapping with the fingertips to stimulate certain meridian energy points while the client is ‘tuned in’ to the problem.”
Safe Self-Harm – Clean needles for junkies, Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra for sex offenders, and now… Patients who want to harm themselves could be given clean blades and advice on where to cut, under plans drawn up by nurses’ leaders. Senior nurses working with mental health patients have drawn up the proposals for ‘safe self-harm’ to be debated in April by the Royal College of Nursing. If the nurses’ proposals are adopted, patients could be taken to a safe place where they would be watched and given advice while they cut themselves.
Private Health Care: It’s Not Just For Capitalists – The leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, Jack Layton is in hot water for getting medical care for a hernia from a private health clinic, instead of waiting for substandard care from the government like a good socialist. His claims that he didn’t know it was a private health clinic are somewhat dubious. Wouldn’t not having to go on a waiting list for several years have aroused some suspicion?
Cuban Healthcare Realities – If you’re a foreigner with hard currency, you can get acceptable medical treatment even in Cuba. If you’re not, you’ll find yourself in a facility like this.
Socialized Medicine in Action – New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi has revealed that from the beginning of 2000 through the end of last March, 198 ‘Level 3′ sex offenders have received Medicaid-reimbursed Viagra after being convicted of a sex crime such as rape, sexual abuse, or sexual conduct against a child. A two-year-old baby and a 90-year-old woman are among the victims of the lucky beneficiaries.
Canada to Give Heroin to Addicts – Canada deals with the problem of heroin addiction by giving addicts heroin at taxpayers’ expense.
Photo Tour of Healthcare in Socialist Paradise
Socialized Medicine Results in Slow Starvation For Elderly British Patient – Elderly stroke victim Olive Nockels spent an agonizing month slowly dying of hunger in a British hospital, despite her pleas for food. Attempts by her relatives to force the hospital to do something other than wait for her to die became bogged down in the legal system.
Muslim Medicine – Dr. Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association and a member of the Muslim Council of Britain, is demanding that British Muslims refrain from vaccinating their children for diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, diphtheria, meningitis, tetanus, etc., because the vaccines are not ‘halal’.
Justice at Last: Castro Made to Suffer Cuban Healthcare – Cuban doctors messed up by trying to avoid a colostomy (opening a hole in the abdomen), instead sewing the colon to the rectum. When this didn’t work, they went in again and installed a Korean-made artificial bowel extension.
Patrick Kennedy: Socialize Decadence – Patrick Kennedy, Democratic Congressman from Rhode Island wants to forceinsurance companies to provide treatment for his fellow substance abusers.
For context, see this post.
