Monday, January 28, 2008

Debatable

King Charles over at his blog palace often feels when he posts, his nibs just presents a link and graces us peasants with a brief pronouncement and dusting off his hands -- job done. After all, he probably feels he has done the tough work of finding these wonderful self-evident gems of truth and it is a matter of res ipsa loquitor.

In many single payer countries the issue of rationing comes up and le Roi Charles happened upon an article in one of the British tabs describing a nascent debate over cutting off care for the elderly and those with unhealthy lifestyles.

These arguments come and go, but of course ever eager to produce horror movies about how awful health care is elsewhere, Charley tosses it into his sheep pen for them to upchuck their cud on. The idea is that is we took on such a system, pretty soon we'd have to make the macabre decision of who lives or dies...sometime in the future.

Obviously isolated in his royalness, Charles has failed to notice that in this country the future is not only now but always has been. Guess what Chuck. Tens of thousands of people are already dying every year in this country because of poor access to health care.

And someone is making life or death decisions. They're called health insurance companies.

5 comments:

  1. A quibble, perhaps, but the venerable Daily Torygraph's a broadsheet, not a tabloid.

    Pip pip, old bean.

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  2. I doth say I do take umbrage, Sir Shorewood. That popinjay does not deserve to be named a king, in any language.

    It is truly an insult to those of us that are rightfully members of the royal peerage.

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  3. You doth rule in a different realm. The aforementioned King Charles reigns over sheep.

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  4. Another thought on the subject at hand...The private insurance companies will often drive up their rates to the point that it becomes unaffordable for the patient. If you have a history of serious medical condition(s), the insurance companies will often charge in excess of $1,000 per month for the patient, forcing them onto, you guessed it, tax-payer subsidized health care.

    Thus under their plan, you, as a taxpayer, are only paying for the high cost patients, while the insurance companies are raking in the profits with the low cost patients. And then the right squawks about taxes being to high.

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  5. This is sort of like the school choice model. Take what you want if you are a private enterprise, throw the rest onto government and claim the public program isn't working.

    That is pretty much their modus operandi for everything. There should be flash cards on these things so the public can keep up with the right.

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