Those of us who are adamantly opposed to the government controlling or dominating healthcare are generally opposed for two reasons:
1) It degrades the quality of healthcare. Patients may have to drive farther to find providers, be put on a waiting list, and possibly be moved so low on the totem pole if they're older and have a serious illness, that they're basically being written off.
2) The government holds the upper hand, with way too much power to determine the health care choices you have and the actions you may pursue. In other words, individual liberty is trampled upon, and people cannot tailor their own coverage to suit their unique needs. Wealth, which often is the result of hard work, saving and deferring gratification, does not offer any advantages as it should.
As bad as Obamacare has been (and it has been abysmal), it's still not as extreme as Great Britain's disastrous National Health Service (NHS). Two high profile cases -- both involving infants -- in the past couple of years illustrate the rigid and calloused nature of government-run healthcare.
The first involved Charlie Gard, born Aug. 4, 2016. He was diagnosed with a rare inherited disease that affects the body's DNA. The condition causes muscle weakness and brain damage. As the baby's condition worsened, the parents wanted to take him to see specialists in the United States, who had offered an experimental therapy. But the tyrants of Great Britain's NHS and court system wouldn't budge. Hearings before the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court did no good. The parents appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, also to no avail. (Statists stick together, you see.)
On July 28, 2017, just a week short of his first birthday, Charlie Gard passed away. There's no guarantee that the experimental treatment in the United States would have prolonged his life substantially, but it is heartbreaking that his parents were not allowed to pursue that option. It speaks to an intransigent, arrogant application of government power to cow citizens into submission.
More recently, we learned of the tragic story of Alfie Evans, who died yesterday, just two weeks short of his second birthday. Alfie had an undiagnosed neurodegenerative disorder, and the NHS apparatchiks determined it was not in the child's "best interests" to continue keeping him on a ventilator.
Alfie's parets, Tom and Kate, appealed several times before eventually acquiescing just a few days before his death. Their change of heart followed a meeting with NHS officials who, some speculate, put the hammer down with thinly veiled threats that it definitely would not be in Tom and Kate's best interests to continue pushing back against the state. Orwellian behavior is alive and well in Great Britain.
Alfie hung on for a couple days even after being disconnected from the ventilator, and the cruel NHS overlords would not give him food in his last few days. Again, there's no guarantee that experimental treatments would have saved Alfie, but it is not the state's place to deny that option to parents.
Here in the United States, we know that government-controlled healthcare leads to rationing of limited resources. There's a doctor shortage, and demand for services keeps increasing (especially with illegal immigrants swamping the country).
Many physicians and dentists have elected not to participate in Medicaid and Medicare because of low reimbursement rates. Therefore, the dirty little secret is swept under the rug by the corrupt progressives of the media: Many who rely on Medicaid and Medicare must drive long distances to find care, often venturing into sketchy neighborhoods to find a clinic, put up with cramped waiting rooms and long lines, only to deal with surly caregivers who may or may not speak unbroken English.
The uber-imperious Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of Obamacare, has spoken in favor of euthanasia, although backed away from that in recent years. He stated plainly during the Obamacare debates of 2009-2010 that by the time a person reaches age 75, fewer medical treatments and interventions should be made because that person already has lived a long life. Time to start planning for hospice and putting your affairs in order.
Emanuel sat on the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (an Orwellian name, if I do say so), an Obamacare panel of bureaucrats whose charge was to coordinate the distribution of health care funds and resources, and in effect play God as to which types of cases merited further intervention, and which did not.
Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin coined the apt term "Death Panels" for Obamacare's apparatchik committees, which were composed of experts with every bit as much arrogance and sanctimony as Emanuel. It's the progressive way, after all.
During the first few years of Obamacare, we witnessed the state trampling on First Amendment religious rights with mandates that Catholic and other religious organizations offer healthcare coverage that paid for contraceptives (including the "morning after pill"). Pushback has been intense, with some cases still awaiting resolution. In 2014, Hobby Lobby won its case in Burwell V. Hobby Lobby that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, closely held for-profit corporations are exempt from the contraceptive mandate if they object on religious grounds.
So government health care abuses vary in nature: Restricting patients' rights to pursue their own health care course of action; forcing coverage that violates religious beliefs, and forcing people who don't need certain coverage to pay for it: e.g., maternity coverage for men and 70-year-old women; women paying for prostate cancer coverage.
The Obama administration routinely used the power and authority of government to go after enemies -- especially with the IRS, EPA, and Department of Justice. What's to stop a future Democrat administration from doing the same with health care?
Healthcare tyranny is just another offshoot of too much power in the hands of the state. While elitists going back to Woodrow Wilson fancied a super-smart administrative state making our decisions for us and helping allocate resources more efficiently in the name of fairness and compassion, real life and human nature demonstrate that this is a dangerous fantasy based on naivete and idealism.
The Republicans under Donald Trump have at least repealed the Obamacare mandate, eliminated some regulations and promoted more flexibility for states and small businesses, but it will take a while to totally dismantle the hideous Rube Goldberg colossus. My contempt is never-ending for the naive and gullible former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak, whose vote enabled Obamacare to pass.
Let's hope the Republicans keep Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans in mind going forward.
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