Guest Post by Ron Paul
Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment.
The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing so is safe seems to imply that no one will actually suffer from this policy. However, health-care providers have great discretion to determine when it is “safe” to withhold treatment. So, patients could be left with chronic pain or be denied certain procedures that could improve their health but are not necessary to make them “safe.” Patients accused of racism or sexism could also find themselves at the bottom of the NHS’s infamous “waiting lists,” unable to receive treatment until it truly is a matter of life and death.
Since many people define racism and sexism as “anything I disagree with,” the new policy will no doubt lead to people being denied medical care for statements that most reasonable people would consider unobjectionable.
This is not the first time NHS has withheld treatment because of an individual’s behavior. A couple years ago, another local health committee announced it would withhold routine or nonemergency surgeries from smokers and the obese. Since reducing smoking and obesity benefits both individual patients and the health care system as a whole, this policy may appear defensible. But denying or delaying care violates medical ethics and sets a dangerous precedent. If treatment could be denied to smokers and the obese, then it could also be denied to those who engage in promiscuous sex, drive over the speed limit, don’t get the “proper” number of vaccinations for themselves and their children, or have “dangerous” political views.
Government bureaucrats denying care to individuals for arbitrary reasons is the inevitable result of government interference in the health-care market. Government intervention is supposed to ensure quality and affordable (or free) care for all. But, government intervention artificially lowers the costs of health care to patients while increasing costs to providers. As demand rises and supply falls, government imposes rationing to address the shortages and other problems caused by prior government interference.
Rationing has been part of American health care at least since the passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. Every plan to expand government’s role in health care contains some form of rationing.
Advocates for government intervention in health care will counter complaints about rationing by saying the related health-care decisions are being made to benefit people’s quality of life. But, claiming government officials know how medical treatment can best enhance quality of life is as absurd as claiming that government officials know the correct prices of automobiles.
The only way to reverse the slide into national health care and rationing is for those who understand the economic and moral case for liberty to keep pushing to replace Obamacare and all other government intrusions into health care. Government-controlled health care must be replaced by free-market health care that empowers individuals to determine for themselves what does and does not enhance their quality of life.
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I misgendered a dude once. I mean lady. LADY! Can I still get my blood pressure medicine?
Sorry, you’re SOL!
…Will that be a private or public burial?…
Anyone supporting unconstitutional Federal actions are close to being Traitors, and that would include all persons in violation of the 14th Amendment, Equal Under The Law. Any Federal Agency or individual treating Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Indians, Homosexuals, illegals, ex-criminals, Behavior Disabled, etc as a Privileged Class are Traitors to the Whole Body of American Citizens. As for the Needy, they should be provided Local assistance on a case by case basis and only temporary for Able Bodied Persons. Of course, Traitors and Illegals should not receive Freebees other than emergencies.
Emergency care should still be relegated to a voluntary basis only. Restore a free, fully private market, and charities can fill in if they so desire.
You know they use to. My youngest sister was born in a Catholic Charity Hospital. It use to work that is until FedGov f’d it up.
“Traitors to the Whole Body of American Citizens” Yes, the whole body Americanus. Especially the half that wants to kill you, as compared to most of the other half that will care about you as much as they and you cared about Randy Weaver in his time of need. I’m so glad your my bros! Can’t lose.
Once the government controls access, the death panels are inevitable. And there is truly no other name for them.
If there were actually a true free market then free market healthcare might be the answer. There is no free market anymore, if there ever was.
We could start with price transparency and forbid the revolving door between the FDA and big Pharma but that’s not gonna happen so we are stuck.
Too many people want .gov to fix everything when they actually turn everything they touch to shit.
Abolish the Federal Reserve and begin allowing gold, silver, and other precious metals and even other currencies to circulate as money, and the process of restoring the free market can begin. So long as this cabal of banksters controls 1/2 of every transaction, there can be no free market.
However, abolishing the Federal Reserve is but one aspect. The AMA has to be destroyed. It alone has done everything to pervert the market for medical care in the united States.
The AMA did NOT DO IT ALONE!! They had the help of EVERY state legislature and much of the federal government apparatus. My point was not that ending the Fed would take care of the problems, but without the unlimited money supply, the crimes of the government would be seriously curtailed, and once money was free of political influence, it would start flowing the way the MARKET intended, not politicians. Of course, just a first step. Truly, until GOVERNMENT is taken 100% OUT of the medical marketplace (beginning with the money), patients will never truly be properly taken care of.
about 1980,give or take a year,i was taking an economics class–the textbook used the ama as an example of a perfect monopoly b/c the ama controls the # of admissions to med school–
every time since they had that power they would limit med school admissions if the income of physicians leveled off or declined–
It is NOT a real market at all.
When the TriCare Humana people realized they had paid for USAFretiree dependent care when I turned out to be VA covered, they sent the hospital a bill.
Eventually they stopped sending us to collection after my husband sent them the governing law. There are some places knowing law helps. Not many.
But Defense Authorization Acts are where the good stuff gets tucked.
Please tell me one single entitlement program that has not grown limbs and started making more clients.
No bureaucrat will ever solve problems. That would eliminate his job.
Duh.
Now that medical care has been made an entitlement it can only burgeon, never shrink.
As one who has recently used hospital services for a heart bypass I can tell you affirmative action is in the process of destroying our health care. I would not let some blacks anywhere near myself. I had some really good white doctors that understood so i was able to avoid most blacks. The only reason these low IQ people work in these postions is because of the Federal Government.
You’re very fortunate that they were so understanding. However, you’re absolutely correct!
“Medical assisting” and the 6 week certificate program that is required, has become the dumping ground for everyone not capable of going on to any higher education, nor anyone with enough skills to find their way in the working world without a college degree. Sadly, these folks are the ones assisted living facilities are “required” to hire (by certification), memory care facilities, and other care facilities that are becoming far more important as Alzheimer’s and other dementias (along with other disabilities), plague more and more folks as they get older. Their presence in the doctor’s office and hospitals began a lot farther back, but is still not a good thing. People who care for others should not go into the “field” simply because they can’t hack it at anything else. That is what government jobs are for 🙂
The people of the UK are subjects. They have no freedom or rights, they have only the privileges the government decides to give them.
The people of the US are supposed to be citizens, who have inalienable rights, and who are masters of their government. The problem is the citizens have for far too long been derelict in their duty as citizens and have allowed corporations to rob them of their power and their freedom. Corporations now purchase every elected official in the US on both a national and a local level. Corporations are now the tyrant rulers of the US and the citizens have become the subjects to the corporations.
As our forefathers told us, freedom is not free, and the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of both patriots and tyrants.
The sad thing is, not only are the citizens of the US no longer brave enough to fight for their freedom, they do not even understand who their enemy is. It is not your government that decides your fate, it is the corporations who own your government.
” It is not your government that decides your fate, it is the corporations who own your government.”
I tend to think it is the marriage of both. One could not survive without the other. As MC stated above, it is the revolving door that is the problem. It works both ways, and both government and corporations are equally corrupt.
Without the corporate money which buys the politicians, the politicians would have to act in the public interest to get re-elected. Corporations provide the money which buys the brainwashing which keeps the criminals in office…. If you want to find the truth, follow the money.
“citizens have for far too long been derelict”
And nothing but up votes on the ugly truth. Go figure.
Why do you cry all the time about votes?
This is going to be used only against white people.
Anyone who has been in the military knows ALL ABOUT “government-run “healthcare.” ‘Don’t want to take your flu shot? You’re “processed for discharge.” You wake up one morning and find that the sliding scale has determined you to be obese. If you don’t lose the weight you’re “processed for discharge.” I’m sure that, by now, such things as smoking cessation and “non-binary gender “sensitivity” has scurried under that umbrella as well.
What happens when these things bedevil you as a civilian under “government-run “healthcare?” I would guess that the only thing needed would be for d’gubment to “redefine” “processed for discharge…”
…Soylent Green, anyone?…
Who gets to make up the litmus test ( admission form) ? I think we all know what the questions will look like . I wonder what the average social credit score of people like… never mind, I’ll just take care of my own health issues.
A great White Christmas this year!!!!!!
What an astoundingly stupid policy. Who is going to report on patients and who is going to interpret what they said? Under the influence of anesthesia, for example, people can say all sorts of stupid things. This PC crap has got to end. BTW will they be treating racism toward white males, for example, the same way that they will treat racism toward Moslems? I wonder.
Once you allow a person to be denied basic services (medical, housing, education, etc.) based on another person’s perception of their actions (however egregious they may at first seem) then you open the door to denying the same and further services and rights based on the whims of those in power.
It’s a very slippery slope, and proves that we have thrown the idea of free speech (and free thought) out the window.