PrintJanuary 23, 2007
Socialized medicine is not the solution
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has advocated some type of government sponsored health insurance for those Californians who lack it. Senator Hillary Clinton has promised/warned us that socialized medicine (let's call it by its real name) will be a basic plank in her platform of taking America back from those she thinks usurped the Democrats' natural right to power. And as Americans pay ever higher taxes to cover those who are uninsured while simultaneously paying ever higher insurance premiums for their own care, government health care begins to sound like the solution. But the solution may not be a cure as those recipients of the sometimes vaunted British system discover
And in yet another example, now a British family has been forced to totally disrupt its family life and move to the United States
to obtain pioneering cancer treatment for her five-year-old son blamed NHS under-funding yesterday.
Why did the British discourage her? The mother
Yes, the British system does not do the treatment; the parents were informed their child's case was incurable while theysaid she feared that the British scepticism about the treatment was motivated more by financial than medical considerations.
warned her that the American hospital would "simply take your money and experiment on your child".
And speaking of financial considerations, the British hospital refused to allow a family friend of the patient's parents bring the child's stem cells to America; the parents had to pay for a certified courier to transport them. Meanwhile, in exploitive America, the family is staying in a New York Ronald McDonald House; New York police are trying to raise money for the boy's care.
Yes, something has to be done about health care costs. That something is not a government takeover, though.
