Just spent some time at www.nice.org.uk, which is the UK's health care rationing board. This is something that Osama has not only proposed for the USA, but the money to pay for it already has been allocated in the Stimulus Package. NICE develops standards for care for the UK health care monolith. I mean industry.
Apart from the physicians and other experts who are part of this organization, a Citizens Council of about 30 people -- representative of everyone in the UK, the organization says -- meet a few times every year to grapple with questions like, Should age be part of considerations in determining health care treatments?
Interesting to read the results of the Citizens Councils deliberations. Like, if older people can actually die from the flu, while younger people only get sick for a couple days but are likely to recover, then the limited supply of "flu jabs" should go first to older people. At least 22 people out of the whole Council seemed to agree on this. Others believed everyone should be treated the same.
At some point, this becomes so very, very sad. I'm sure both the experts and the Citizens Council of NICE are sincere in their efforts to consider the various aspects of health care, and I'm sure they hope to be fair. But take a step back and look again....
Suppose you fall down a flight of stairs and, while you weren't knocked unconscious or didn't seem to break any bones, when you wake up the next morning, your knee hurts so bad you can't bend it or straighten it out. It's black-and-blue and swollen. So what do you do?
Go the local health council, made up of physicians and other experts, accountants, and then a half-dozen of your neighbors. They all examine your knee from various perspectives and decide on what your treatment will be, including how valuable your comfort and mobility are to the community as a whole vs. the cost of treating your knee.
They may come up with some good decisions, like maybe x-ray your knee to determine if any bones are broken. Or they may decide that your knee doesn't matter half as much as buying a supply of swine flu serum, so they will invest no time or money at all in your small problem.
Your knee has become a political issue and will be evaluated and disposed of in that light.
This whole situation is predicated on two assumptions:
1.) All health care resources, including physicians' time and expertise, the means and tools of diagnosis and therapy, all of it, are community resources. They don't belong to any one person or corporation. They're like the Great Lakes; they're just out there.
2.) Your physical condition is everyone's business.
Is either one of these assumptions true? Or something you want to be true?
So you spend 12 or more years in medical and specialty studies, as an intern and resident, yadayadayada, all to become a public utility. After all, you said you wanted to help people. And then why all the study? Any treatment you can offer patients is predetermined by poltical functionaries and government accountants. Government accountants especially.
What about hospitals? They don't belong to anyone? They don't have to pay employees, buy equipment, turn some kind of profit so that they will attract investor money to pay for their construction and maintenance? What if your local Humana hospital no longer can make enough money to stay open? Then what happens? It may become part of your local tax burden.
When Medicaid went into effect in Illinois, at least five hospitals in poor city neighborhoods closed their doors. Their clientele were largely Medicaid/Medicare recipients. Those organizations don't pay the full cost for care. Those hospitals shut their doors. They simply don't exist anymore. People go to County Hospital instead, take a number, and wait all day in the Emergency Room for treatment.
And how much cost is generated by the governing bodies, enforcement agencies, political groups, etc. -- which are pretty much pimples on the butt of the actual practice of medicine? They aren't necessary for a citizen to visit a doctor, be examined, diagnosed, and treated. All these guide personnel and citizens committees just stand and watch, record, and evaluate. They serve no useful purpose in the health care process, except to provide a layer of control over it.
Does the practice of medicine require this additional layer of control? Or is it an obstruction and an unnecessary expense?
If you seriously want to cut the cost -- and I mean "cost" not "price" -- of medical care, get the politicians out of the system. They only add immeasurable and largely useless expense.
This is what it means to "politicize" an issue. Like women's rights. It's no longer your family's problem, Oprah needs to get involved and put it on TV so all kinds of strangers can become indignant over your husband's brutality and your own masochistic tendencies. And, by all means, let's vote on some aspect of this or another. Let's develop some kind of consensus, and in the case of bringing the government into an issue, let's make laws for "proper" behavior so that we lock up anyone who falls short of the standard devised by popular vote, or the "sigh meter."
Does anyone really want to live like this? Exhibitionists leap to mind. All others, not so much.
In the area of health care, with socialized medicine (making all health care resources community resources) and then especially inviting "representative citizens" in to help determine therapies -- this isn't even just plain-vanilla socialism. It's Marxist communism. Textbook Marxist communism. Osama can call it anything he likes, but if it walks like a duck....
Osama is a Marxist. Didn't I say so before? Need more evidence? Or is it more important to US citizens to find a Messiah to surrender to, rather than to take on the burden of living their own lives their own way?
It's just sad. In the words of Dante, from his account of hell: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
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