The immorality of socialized medicine

The spread of extremely dangerous disease in Canadian hospitals has received much publicity in recent years. In particular C. difficile and SARS have made headlines.

The medical professionals know a lot about these diseases, their causes and prevention. But a root cause of the problem, government monopoly healthcare, continues to be ignored.

It seems Britain has a similar problem with similar roots. This excellent column by Charles Moore describes the British National Health System. Change the names and it perfectly describes the situation in Canada:

The point our leaders are constantly making is not medical, but moral. It is that the NHS embodies organised altruism. It proves that we, as a nation, care for one another. It makes us "the envy of the world", and it makes us good.

Nevertheless, the basic proposition is not true. The National Health Service is not, morally, or in any other way, the best system of healthcare in the world. Indeed, it is morally defective at its very root, because it does not — cannot — put the sick first. Until this is recognised, it cannot be reformed.

The NHS is, with our state school system, the last major survival in this country of the idea of the 1940s that government can decide what is best for us and make sure that it is done.

We all know that a Minister for Industry could not possibly decide how many computers we produce or how many investment banks we should have. We all know that a Minister for Food could not wisely decree what vegetables should be sold in which shops.

But we cling to the idea that a single organisation employing 1.4 million people, with the GDP of an entire Scandinavian country, run by politicians, can meet our health needs.

Suppose Sainsbury's cold meat counter was found to have helped kill more than 300 people, would the company survive? Yet the NHS sails on, dealing death.

This is all, morally, wrong. It turns the patient from being the entity for which the service exists into a nuisance. Each new patient is just an added cost and each dead patient is an administrative convenience.

The NHS is run from top to bottom, and therefore, from top to bottom, it is bad.

My personal experience of conditions in our hospitals on several occasions over the past decade have reinforced my conviction that Mr. Moore’s analysis is correct. The worst experience was sharing a heart surgery recovery room in a dirty, decrepit old hospital with four or five other patients. While we have a new hospital now, cleanliness remains a serious problem as there continues to be outbreaks of C. difficile and who knows what else. No doubt the careless, dirty old practices followed the staff to the new digs. And the government certainly hasn’t given up its monopoly.

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A ‘Peace’ prize for junk science

Two excellent columns in Saturday’s ‘Post’ on the Nobel Peace Prize.

Terence Corcoron concludes:

Peter Foster agrees and says that Gore’s and IPCC’s work have nothing to do with ‘peace’:

Global warming theory has been in political and scientific trouble for some time, but who knew it had sunk so low it needed a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee?
Mr. Gore is by no means an anomaly when it comes to Peace Prizewinners being peddlers of nonsense, tellers of whoppers, or even promoters of political strife.
... the prize was awarded to Mr. Gore and the IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." But what does that have to do with peace?
[...]
... Al Gore's and the IPCC's idea of a good cause involves -- as with Mr. Strong -- demonization of Western lifestyles and promoting the belief that, until we change, we deserve to be attacked morally, and perhaps even physically. It's a funny basis for a Peace Prize.

Update: Mark Steyn's contribution.

The prize has elevated junk science, gross exaggeration and outright misrepresentation to high international stature, the most prestigious award in the world, discrediting all who work honestly to find the facts and do the right thing.

‘No’ means ‘yes’

That’s Andrew Coyne’s reading of the meaning of the 63/37 rejection of PR/MMP in the Ontario referendum. This is typical of the PR fanatics - keep pressing for change till it happens then we’re stuck with it.

Iain Hunter has an excellent take on the PR pushers:

Who are these people, anyway?

Mostly, they're losers. Some of them are former politicians who wish they'd gone farther than they did. Some couldn't get elected dogcatcher. A lot of them are supporters of parties that have little chance of forming either the government or official opposition.

Many more are on the political fringe, among the raving loonies and raging grannies, fanatic cyclists and yogic flyers who have their special, sometimes weird, priorities that they feel everyone should share.

There are women who believe the electoral system must be changed if their sex is to gain the political influence it deserves, and aboriginals who see that system, and what it has produced, as a cause of so much of their historical hurt and present grievances.

And academics, who love tinkering with things, encourage citizens' committees to come up with proposals for a new model that will make each voter think that he or she counts more than he or she does now.

... And pundits like Coyne. And they’ll be back. Like Quebec separatists, they don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.

Al Gore's big prize

So, Al Gore shares the Nobel Peace Prize for climate hysteria with the U.N. IPCC. I guess the Nobel committee hadn't gotten around to reading the British High Court's findings on how economical with the 'truth' Gore was in "An Inconvenient Truth".

Oh, well! Al's in good company - Yasser Arafat, Jimmy Carter, etc - which is proof positive that climate hysteria is strictly a political matter.

Republican debate moderated by flaming liberal

William Watson liked what he saw in the recent Republican debate. Even though moderator Chris Matthews didn’t seem to have much of a clue, Fred Thompson showed he knows his stuff on Canada. And Rudi Giuliani had a good line on health care:

"... a looming problem with Canada that you missed. If we do HillaryCare or
socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health
care."

But flaming liberal Chris Matthews as moderator? That’s like having Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity moderate a Democratic debate on Fox. Never happen!

A good Act to follow

Lawrence Solomon weighs in on the recent British High Court findings regarding Al Gore’s global warming schlockumentary. In addition to the court findings of ‘error’ in the film, what is notable is the U.K. Education Act of 1996:

...explicitly requires that: "The local education authority, governing body and head teacher shall forbid ... the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school."

Excellent idea, but that didn’t stop the government from explicitly endorsing the political indoctrination of school kids. The U.K. Education Secretary said:

"influencing the opinions of children is crucial to developing a long-term view on the environment among the public. Children are the key to changing society's long-term attitudes to the environment. Not only are they passionate about saving the planet, but children also have a big influence over their own families' lifestyles and behaviour."

This was supported by the Environment Minister who endorsed a closed mind approach to climate science:

"The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over, as demonstrated by the publication of the report by the IPCC..."

Thankfully, someone challenged (so far, successfully) the government’s blatant disregard of the law.

I know the Gore sci-fi horror flick is being widely shown in BC schools and no doubt elsewhere. It would be nice if we had laws forbidding such propaganda. The British Education Act would be a good one for us to emulate.

Convenient pack of lies

Evidence continues to mount that Al Gore and his puppet masters have been playing fast and loose with the 'truth'. This time it comes in the form of a widely reported British court ruling.

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