Horrible Healthcare Op-Eds

[Straha]

So there have been a bunch of god awful editorials on Health Care in the United States. And I thought it's about time the worst of them get compiled and mocked, as it truly appropriate for them.

Starting with the editorial that made me want to start this thread:

What Lies Beneath
by Cal Thomas

The debate — OK, the shouting match — we are having over “health care reform” is about many things, including cost, who gets help and who does not and who, or what, gets to make that determination. Underlying it all is a larger question: Is human life something special? Is it to be valued more highly than, say, plants and pets? When someone is in a “persistent vegetative state” do we mean to say that person is equal in value to a carrot?

Are we now assigning worth to human life, or does it arrive with its own pre-determined value, irrespective of race, class, IQ, or disability?

The bottom line is not the bottom line. It is something far more profound. Our decisions regarding who will get help and who won’t are more than about bean-counting bureaucrats deciding if your drugs or operation will cost more than you are contributing to the U.S. Treasury.

The secular left claims we are evolutionary accidents who managed to crawl out of the slime and by “natural selection” stand erect and over millions of years outsmart our ancestors, the apes. If that is your belief, then you probably think health care should be rationed. Why spend lots of money to improve — or save — the life of someone who evolved from slime and has no special significance other than the “accident” of becoming human? Policies flow from such a philosophy, though the average secularist probably wouldn’t put it in such stark terms. Stark, or not, isn’t this the inevitable progression of seeing humanity as maybe complex, but nothing special?

The opposing view sees human beings as unique creations. Even Thomas Jefferson, identified by historians as a Deist who doubted the existence of a personal God, understood that if certain rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) do not come from a source beyond the reach of the state, then the state could take those rights away. Those who believe that God made us and also makes the rules about our existence and our behavior will have a completely different understanding of life’s value and our approach to affirming it until natural death.

It is between these two distinctly different worldview goal posts that the battle is taking place. Few from the “endowed rights” side are saying that a 100-year-old with an inoperable brain tumor should be given extraordinary and expensive care to keep the heart pumping, even after brain waves have gone flat. But there is a big difference between “letting go” and “snuffing out.” The unnatural progression for many on the secular left is to see such a person as a “burden.” In an age when we think we should be free of burdens — a notion that contributes to our superficiality and makes us morally obtuse — getting rid of granny might seem perfectly rational, even defensible. But by doing so, we assume an even greater burden: the role of God in deciding who gets to live and who must die. Anyone who has seen the film “Bruce Almighty” senses how difficult it is to play God.

We are now witnessing some of the consequences of attempting to ban people with a God perspective from the public square.[/u] If there are no rules and no one to whom one might appeal when those rules are violated, we are on our own to set whatever rules we wish and to change them in a moment in response to opinion polls. Any appeals to a higher authority stop at the Supreme Court.

The explosive town hall meetings are indications that Americans are trusting government less and less. So where should we go? The answer is in your wallet or purse. It’s on the money. Right now it is little more than a slogan, but what if it became true: in God We Trust.

Oh no! The Damn Dirty Atheists are coming to take away my Right to the Pursuit of Happiness away next! Run for the hills!

Another one by him which I found when I went onto his website to find the last one:

NHS Vs. USA

PORTADOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND — For the past month I have watched British media report and comment on the American health care uproar. American cable networks are also available here. The back-and-forth reporting and commentary resembles a replay of the War of 1812, this time with verbal salvos. Conservative American politicians and commentators fire at the British NHS system and the British fire back, sometimes on the same program, repeating the Democrats’ mantra of how 47 million Americans are “uninsured” and how medical treatment in the United States depends on how much patients, or their insurance companies, will pay. Here, they say, health care is “free,” thanks to taxpayers, a minority of which (i.e. the successful) bears ever-greater amounts of the burden.

A conservative British politician trashes the NHS on Fox News and the BBC carries an excerpt, along with a defense of the NHS by other British politicians, including Tory leader — and prime minister in waiting — David Cameron. In an apparent effort to outflank the critically ill Labour Party, Cameron promises to strengthen the NHS.

The British media are conflicted. They patriotically defend the NHS, while simultaneously acknowledging its serious shortcomings. One example: A recent Daily Mail editorial praised the NHS for its free care and universal availability, but then added, “Our survival rates for breast, prostate, ovarian and lung cancers are among the worst in Europe, despite huge additional expenditures.” Free is nice, but best is better.

Beyond the headlines are some disturbing trends within the NHS that ought to serve as a warning to Americans, should they wish to abandon, rather than improve, our current system for treating the sick.

Last week, a London Times story began: “Hospitals Creaking Under the Strain as NHS Vacancies Are Left Unfilled.”

The story reported that socialized medicine has created a shortage of doctors, nurses and other clinical staff. As of March 31, a survey found a 5.2 percent vacancy rate in these critical fields, compared to a 3.6 percent vacancy rate a year earlier. According to the Times, “Qualified nurses and midwives are retiring at a greater rate than newly trained staff can enter the professions.” A poll conducted by the Royal College of Nurses found that among 8,600 young people, aged 7 to 17, “only 1 in 20 considered nursing to be an attractive career.”

Anthony Halperin, a Trustee of the Patients Association, said: “Nursing staff see that there are higher rewards in the private sector while doctors and dentists no longer see medicine as a career for life, or are having their hours cut back by European legislation. All of this has negative outcomes for patients.” A man attending a town meeting in America and who opposes the Democrats’ reform plan said on Fox News, (and replayed on BBC): “Have you seen British teeth?”

Anyone wishing to revise America’s medical system and model it after Britain and Canada ought to thoroughly examine how these health care systems function before plunging into the same pool. A reasonable conclusion is that these systems require long waits and treatments (if you can get them) that are inferior to the U.S., based on government “guidelines” that frequently approve care only if the patient is deemed “worthy of the investment.”

As a symbol, Adolf Hitler has been overused, but the philosophy behind the horrors he unleashed can be found in the beliefs of some of those who would use the power of the state to determine who gets help and who doesn’t.

The 1933 Sterilization Law was one of Hitler’s first acts after taking power. Called “The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring,” it required compulsory sterilizations for those deemed by the state to be “racially unsound,” including people with disabilities.

In a posting on the Huntington’s Disease Website (http://www.hdac.org/features/article.ph ... Number=384), Phil Hardt, who along with his wife visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington to study the Third Reich’s view of medicine and the sick, reached this conclusion: “Perhaps when you reduce a human being to nothing more than an ‘element,’ they somehow become easier to abuse and later kill.”

As with a journey, so it is with inhumanity: both begin with a single step.

"There are problems with the NHS! Therefore anyone who wants to adopt that system must be criminally insane!" Also I love his bit at the end saying "Hitler has been over used, but surely this is Hitlerish! And look! He passed a law dealing with Healthcare too! Just like Obama wants to do! See what I'm saying!"

[Teebs]

I liked in the second article how they said that the British media makes negative comparisons between the NHS and other European health systems while missing the point that all of those are also universal health care systems, just based on different models.

[Stark]

Remember, you can't be 'on the same side' as something and still be critical of it's flaws. Remember, Americans only want something if it's perfect, not if it's better than what they have. I mean, they still use the M-16 and the imperial system.

I enjoy idiots talking shit with obviously no research, but it's sad they focus on the right-wing talking points (ie omg death camps) instead of the ACTUAL flaws with these systems (like entrenched, inefficient bureaucracies, etc) and demonstrating that these are worse in government than in the massively duplicated and profit-driven insurance industry.

[Samuel]

Our decisions regarding who will get help and who won’t are more than about bean-counting bureaucrats deciding if your drugs or operation will cost more than you are contributing to the U.S. Treasury.

So the new system will judge how much help you get based on your wealth... while the old system will judge how much help you get based on... did they even think when writting this?

managed to crawl out of the slime

Actually the crawling came latter. And I'm pretty sure there is still debate about where life began.

Why spend lots of money to improve — or save — the life of someone who evolved from slime and has no special significance other than the “accident” of becoming human?

Because we are selfish bastards who don't want to die either?

do not come from a source beyond the reach of the state, then the state could take those rights away.

State of emergency ring a bell?

In an age when we think we should be free of burdens

Or because resources are limited and we'd rather save 10 people than waste it on 1.

Anyone who has seen the film “Bruce Almighty” senses how difficult it is to play God.

Bruce was an idiot. Not to mention not being able to violate free will

If there are no rules and no one to whom one might appeal when those rules are violated, we are on our own to set whatever rules we wish and to change them in a moment in response to opinion polls. Any appeals to a higher authority stop at the Supreme Court.

People have never disagreed on what God would say.

The explosive town hall meetings are indications that Americans are trusting government less and less.

Or the brownshirts are out in droves.

[Lost Soal]

Are we now assigning worth to human life, or does it arrive with its own pre-determined value, irrespective of race, class, IQ, or disability?

Got news for ya matey. Your government has already put a dollar amount on a human life. It does it with H&S legislation where increasing the safety of workers is balances against how much those measures will cost; it does it when determines the level of protection a police officer or soldier gets equipment wise; when it decides a congressman's life is worth more protection than Joe Blogs and the corporate world has definitely assigned human worth in the form of life insurance, ever heard of it?

The bottom line is not the bottom line. It is something far more profound. Our decisions regarding who will get help and who won’t are more than about bean-counting bureaucrats deciding if your drugs or operation will cost more than you are contributing to the U.S. Treasury.

Your right, its about bean-counting bureaucrats deciding if your drugs or operation will cost more than you are contributing to their profit margins

Even Thomas Jefferson, identified by historians as a Deist who doubted the existence of a personal God, understood that if certain rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) do not come from a source beyond the reach of the state, then the state could take those rights away. Those who believe that God made us and also makes the rules about our existence and our behavior will have a completely different understanding of life’s value and our approach to affirming it until natural death.

I guess God only gave those right to Americans then. Somali's don't have those rights, Iranians don't, and even after the constitution was created blacks didn't. It must be nice to be so special. Or just plain deluded.

[Dark Hellion]

Did he seriously try to use "Bruce Almighty" when a huge motif of that movie is that you occasionally have to do something that makes people unhappy in order to help the most number of people.

[Patrick Degan]

The secular left claims we are evolutionary accidents who managed to crawl out of the slime and by “natural selection” stand erect and over millions of years outsmart our ancestors, the apes. If that is your belief, then you probably think health care should be rationed. Why spend lots of money to improve — or save — the life of someone who evolved from slime and has no special significance other than the “accident” of becoming human? Policies flow from such a philosophy, though the average secularist probably wouldn’t put it in such stark terms. Stark, or not, isn’t this the inevitable progression of seeing humanity as maybe complex, but nothing special?

The opposing view sees human beings as unique creations. Even Thomas Jefferson, identified by historians as a Deist who doubted the existence of a personal God, understood that if certain rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) do not come from a source beyond the reach of the state, then the state could take those rights away. Those who believe that God made us and also makes the rules about our existence and our behavior will have a completely different understanding of life’s value and our approach to affirming it until natural death.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT. Because we all know that the evolutionary view of life means seeing human life as worthless, including one's own. I can hardly ever bring myself to read a Cal Thomas screed for the sheer idiocy-per-square-inch he packs into one five hundred word column, especially with his constant strawmandering of evolution and secularism.

[The Yosemite Bear]

opinion and editorials are not the most intellegent bits, even before journalistic ethics was destroyed they were the pure propaganda section of the paper/magazine.

[Patrick Degan]

opinion and editorials are not the most intellegent bits, even before journalistic ethics was destroyed they were the pure propaganda section of the paper/magazine.

Maybe. But Cal Thomas redefines idiocy with every word he taps out on the keyboard.

[Rogue 9]

I guess God only gave those right to Americans then. Somali's don't have those rights, Iranians don't, and even after the constitution was created blacks didn't. It must be nice to be so special. Or just plain deluded.

You misunderstand the philosophy behind rights-based ethics. To state that someone has the right to something in that sense means that he intrinsically deserves it by virtue of being a sapient being; not that he does in fact get it. The ethical system he is working from states that it is wrong to violate those rights (as I'm sure Mr. Thomas would be very quick to tell you should you bring up the subject of Iran or Somalia), not impossible.

Which is not to say that Cal Thomas isn't a fucking moron. He certainly is, which makes creating strawmen of his position simply unnecessary.

[Darth Wong]

To be honest, nutbars like this are so bizarre that one can take some comfort in knowing that only the crazies take him seriously. Mind you, there are an awful lot of crazies in the US; the country is really showing its worst side to the rest of the civilized world in these health-care debates.

Nevertheless, it's a "for crazies only" kind of editorial. It bothers me more when I see batshit-insane arguments which are taken seriously by people who consider themselves to be well-read, intellectual, etc. Like the one about how private insurance companies won't be able to compete against a public option. Why is Obama even arguing against this? The fucking private insurance companies are the goddamned problem with health-care in America. Health-care reform is not supposed to benefit them!

If someone asks "how are health-insurance companies supposed to compete and remain profitable", the correct answer is "Why should we care if health-insurance companies go bankrupt? They don't care if you go bankrupt. The health-insurance companies are the biggest problem with health-care in America today, and if the public option outperforms them, then the customer wins. If you're saying that private health insurers can't compete with government, then quite frankly, that's their problem. We're trying to lower costs for citizens, not maintain high profits for insurance companies."

But nooooo, Obama tries to make everyone happy at once (his biggest flaw) and promises that health insurers will continue to make sky-high profits while everyone else saves money and nobody's taxes go up. Seriously, what the fuck. Even a flaming liberal like myself can see that this is a load of bullshit; those promises cannot all come true at once. Someone has to suffer, and quite frankly, that "someone" should be those goddamned health insurance companies. Let them all go bankrupt; their lost profits can pay for health-care reform.

[Straha]

Here's another one, by a different fellow this time:

Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama's health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report in June explaining the Obama administration's goal of reducing projected health spending by 30% over the next two decades. That reduction would be achieved by eliminating "high cost, low-value treatments," by "implementing a set of performance measures that all providers would adopt," and by "directly targeting individual providers . . . (and other) high-end outliers."

The president has emphasized the importance of limiting services to "health care that works." To identify such care, he provided more than $1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea. That could morph over time into a cost-control mechanism of the sort proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's original choice for White House health czar. Comparative effectiveness could become the vehicle for deciding whether each method of treatment provides enough of an improvement in health care to justify its cost.

In the British national health service, a government agency approves only those expensive treatments that add at least one Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) per £30,000 (about $49,685) of additional health-care spending. If a treatment costs more per QALY, the health service will not pay for it. The existence of such a program in the United States would not only deny lifesaving care but would also cast a pall over medical researchers who would fear that government experts might reject their discoveries as "too expensive."

One reason the Obama administration is prepared to use rationing to limit health care is to rein in the government's exploding health-care budget. Government now pays for nearly half of all health care in the U.S., primarily through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The White House predicts that the aging of the population and the current trend in health-care spending per beneficiary would cause government outlays for Medicare and Medicaid to rise to 15% of GDP by 2040 from 6% now. Paying those bills without raising taxes would require cutting other existing social spending programs and shelving the administration's plans for new government transfers and spending programs.

The rising cost of medical treatments would not be such a large burden on future budgets if the government reduced its share in the financing of health services. Raising the existing Medicare and Medicaid deductibles and coinsurance would slow the growth of these programs without resorting to rationing. Physicians and their patients would continue to decide which tests and other services they believe are worth the cost.

There is, of course, no reason why limiting outlays on Medicare and Medicaid requires cutting health services for the rest of the population. The idea that they must be cut in parallel is just an example of misplaced medical egalitarianism.

But budget considerations aside, health-economics experts agree that private health spending is too high because our tax rules lead to the wrong kind of insurance. Under existing law, employer payments for health insurance are deductible by the employer but are not included in the taxable income of the employee. While an extra $100 paid to someone who earns $45,000 a year will provide only about $60 of after-tax spendable cash, the employer could instead use that $100 to pay $100 of health-insurance premiums for that same individual. It is therefore not surprising that employers and employees have opted for very generous health insurance with very low copayment rates.

Since a typical 20% copayment rate means that an extra dollar of health services costs the patient only 20 cents at the time of care, patients and their doctors opt for excessive tests and other inappropriately expensive forms of care. The evidence on health-care demand implies that the current tax rules raise private health-care spending by as much as 35%.

The best solution to this problem of private overconsumption of health services would be to eliminate the tax rule that is causing the excessive insurance and the resulting rise in health spending. Alternatively, Congress could strengthen the incentives in the existing law for health savings accounts with high insurance copayments. Either way, the result would be more cost-conscious behavior that would lower health-care spending.

But unlike reductions in care achieved by government rationing, individuals with different preferences about health and about risk could buy the care that best suits their preferences. While we all want better health, the different choices that people make about such things as smoking, weight and exercise show that there are substantial differences in the priority that different people attach to health.

Although there has been some talk in Congress about limiting the current health-insurance exclusion, the administration has not supported the idea. The unions are particularly vehement in their opposition to any reduction in the tax subsidy for health insurance, since they regard their ability to negotiate comprehensive health insurance for their members as a major part of their raison d'être.

If changing the tax rule that leads to excessive health insurance is not going to happen, the relevant political choice is between government rationing and continued high levels of health-care spending. Rationing is bad policy. It forces individuals with different preferences to accept the same care. It also imposes an arbitrary cap on the future growth of spending instead of letting it evolve in response to changes in technology, tastes and income. In my judgment, rationing would be much worse than excessive care.

Those who worry about too much health care cite the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that health-care spending could rise to 30% of GDP in 2035 from 16% now. But during that 25-year period, GDP will rise to about $24 trillion from $14 trillion, implying that the GDP not spent on health will rise to $17 billion in 2035 from $12 billion now. So even if nothing else comes along to slow the growth of health spending during the next 25 years, there would still be a nearly 50% rise in income to spend on other things.

Like virtually every economist I know, I believe the right approach to limiting health spending is by reforming the tax rules. But if that is not going to happen, let's not destroy the high quality of the best of American health care by government rationing and misplaced egalitarianism.

Mr. Feldstein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Ronald Reagan, is a professor at Harvard and a member of The Wall Street Journal's board of contributors.

That's right boys and girls. If we let the Obama plan go through their research will keep you from getting health care. Which is too expensive because people are just tripping over incredibly comprehensive health insurance from their employers left right and sideways. Wow.

[Darth Wong]

I like the way they say that they can control rising health-care costs by gradually getting the government out of health care, and effectively leaving everyone else to either sink or swim under the delicate care of the insurance companies.

What the fuck makes them think that would control rising health-care costs? All it would do is eliminate the ability of anyone but the rich to have access to health care. Far more people would die early under such a system than any kind of imaginable managed-care system.

It seems to me that all of these polemics rely on the assumption that "rationing" of care by socio-economic class is perfectly acceptable (so much so that they won't even call it "rationing"), but "rationing" of care by medical triage rules is somehow an immoral blight upon civilization.

[The Yosemite Bear]

yes, after all it won't effect THEM....

[Patrick Degan]

Like virtually every economist I know, I believe the right approach to limiting health spending is by reforming the tax rules. But if that is not going to happen, let's not destroy the high quality of the best of American health care by government rationing and misplaced egalitarianism.

"The Doctor must be behind this. I sensed the vicious doctrine of egalitarianism."

That's a line from the Doctor Who serial "The Sunmakers", one of the wittier political parodies of the series, and was spoken by the Pluto branch manager of the human-enslaving Company. Notice how the two statements, fictional and real, dovetail. These people really are becoming cartoon villains. And in the end, what really puts the fright in these shills and their corporate masters is the very idea of equal-access to a resource they're determined to keep control over. That's what all this shit about "people making different choices" actually means. If you don't have enough insurance, it's because you made the "choice" not to have enough insurance —nevermind that the "choice" in most cases is forced by simply not having the money for the premiums and therefore is actually no choice at all. They've made it pay-to-play and are determined at all costs to keep it that way.

[Darth Wong]

Notice the careful phrasing: "the high quality of the best of American health care". The guy isn't even trying to hide his "fuck the poor" attitude. He knows that rich people get gold-plated on-demand health care, and he thinks it would be terrible if anything were to compromise this in any way, even if it benefited millions who must currently suffer.

I believe "Let them eat cake" is how this sentiment was once expressed.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Great now I'm picturing people storming the prisons, and cutting off the heads of the bankers, insurance company execs, newsmen, and paris hilton....

....damn, I actually think the Max Rosepierre might have had a method to his madness....

[Simon_Jester]

Remember, you can't be 'on the same side' as something and still be critical of it's flaws. Remember, Americans only want something if it's perfect, not if it's better than what they have. I mean, they still use the M-16 and the imperial system.

Is the M-16 really that bad now that it's gone through a few upgrade cycles? I've heard reasonably complementary remarks from some recent users.

[NecronLord]

A man attending a town meeting in America and who opposes the Democrats’ reform plan said on Fox News, (and replayed on BBC): “Have you seen British teeth?”

My yes I have, Bubba. I happen to have a set. And thanks to universal healthcare (well, actually, thanks to proactive parents and an excellent dentist), I've never so much as had a filling. They're not gleamingly straight polished - but no one in the NHS is preventing me getting that done if it pleases me - from checking my dentist's website, I could start within a few weeks if I wanted to fork out the cash - but they are A1 healthy, thankyouverymuch.

There is an enormous difference between actual healthcare and cosmetics. The NHS does not provide cosmetics save for where it's actually necessary to quality of life (reconstructive, etc) otherwise, you gotta pay - which, oh my, is how it is in America too.

The reason "British Teeth" don't look like wealthy American ones is because on the whole, we have, in comparison, limited tolerance for people mucking around in our mouths for fatuous reasons, especially as compared with the American middle class, who seem to obsess on that 'perfect smile' - hell, we find it rather sinister. Look at the caricatures of Tony Blair. And his actual teeth, which look resonably healthy, but nothing like the shiny creations that say, Obama has.

Of course, such whitening and polishing and straighening and forcing your kids to wear braces so they will be prettier is catching on here. But saying it's some kind of failing of the NHS is utterly and totally ignorant.

Notice the careful phrasing: "the high quality of the best of American health care". The guy isn't even trying to hide his "fuck the poor" attitude. He knows that rich people get gold-plated on-demand health care, and he thinks it would be terrible if anything were to compromise this in any way, even if it benefited millions who must currently suffer.

I believe "Let them eat cake" is how this sentiment was once expressed.

Personally, I'd say if (unlikely) Marie Antoinette said it, it would be an expression of her uncomprehension of the nature of want - "The peasants have no bread" "Can't they go and get some cake then?" I find it hard to credit any American as being so naïvely unaware of the fact that there are people there with disgraceful access to healthcare, so I think he's actually much closer to:

"Eat shit and die, poor people!"

American conservatives don't even have naïvety to fall back on as an excuse. They just honestly think the poor should get reamed continuously.

[Civil War Man]

I like the way they say that they can control rising health-care costs by gradually getting the government out of health care, and effectively leaving everyone else to either sink or swim under the delicate care of the insurance companies.

What the fuck makes them think that would control rising health-care costs? All it would do is eliminate the ability of anyone but the rich to have access to health care. Far more people would die early under such a system than any kind of imaginable managed-care system.

I think you just answered your own question. If all the poor people lose insurance and die, then less money is being spent on healthcare.

I saw the comparison on a Facebook discussion on health care, where someone was deconstructing some lolbertarian's anti-reform bullshit by quoting Dickens at them. Specifically, A Christmas Carol. "Are there no prisons? No poor-houses? If they'd rather die then they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"

Flew right over the lolbertarian's head.

[NecronLord]

I think you just answered your own question. If all the poor people lose insurance and die, then less money is being spent on healthcare.

I saw the comparison on a Facebook discussion on health care, where someone was deconstructing some lolbertarian's anti-reform bullshit by quoting Dickens at them. Specifically, A Christmas Carol. "Are there no prisons? No poor-houses? If they'd rather die then they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"

Flew right over the lolbertarian's head.

As an aside, I seriously considered using that quote in my post above.

It really does sum up US Right Wing attitudes to healthcare, doesn't it?

[Patrick Degan]

I think you just answered your own question. If all the poor people lose insurance and die, then less money is being spent on healthcare.

I saw the comparison on a Facebook discussion on health care, where someone was deconstructing some lolbertarian's anti-reform bullshit by quoting Dickens at them. Specifically, A Christmas Carol. "Are there no prisons? No poor-houses? If they'd rather die then they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"

Flew right over the lolbertarian's head.

As an aside, I seriously considered using that quote in my post above.

It really does sum up US Right Wing attitudes to healthcare, doesn't it?

It rather sums up their whole attitude to society in general, actually.

[Straha]

Here's one that starts off relatively sane only to jump off the deep end for the middle part before crawling out of the water and setting down to wallow as deeply in the mud as it could.

“I believe that by the end of my first term in office that we will have a universal health-care system instituted in this country. That is a commitment that I’ve made, and it is a commitment I want to be held accountable for.”

The words belong to Barack Obama, and he spoke them in April 2007—the last time he visited Portsmouth, N.H., for a town-hall meeting on health care. The Associated Press reported the crowd that day “was almost single-mindedly focused on a single-payer system.” Candidate Obama asked if they would agree to much higher taxes for such a system. And he emphasized that he would remain open to changes even after he released his plan.

Today, a very different Mr. Obama returns to Portsmouth for another town hall on health care. Gone is the demand that supporters acknowledge the implications of their plans (e.g., higher taxes). Gone too is the openness to good ideas from others. In their place is a my-way-or-the-highway president who impugns the character and motives of dissenters.

In his Saturday radio address, the president characterized opponents as “defenders of the status quo” trafficking in “misleading information” and “outlandish rumors.” His communications officer for health care, Linda Douglass, tells CNN that those who show video clips of Mr. Obama speaking are spreading “disinformation.” And far from scaling back the attacks, the same Obama aide who asked people to forward “fishy” emails critical of the president’s proposals yesterday unveiled a new White House Web site accusing critics of scaring Americans “with half-truths and outright lies.”

Now, at one level the intimation that anyone who questions the president must be a liar probably reflects frustration with the legislative outlook for health-care reform. Nevertheless, it is highly unpresidential. And it suggests that the president and his allies see disagreement over health care as less a political dispute than the trampling of sacred doctrine.

That doctrine begins with the notion that health care is a human right, and that government is the only honest player. Accordingly, any health-care plan must be both universal and guaranteed (read: paid for) by the government. And as long as we’re guaranteeing fundamental rights, let’s throw in abortion—no matter how much it complicates getting the bill through.

Different people have different objections to these proposals, almost all practical. Many loathe the status quo and advance reforms that would make health care more market-friendly and coverage more affordable—especially for the working poor. The questions they ask are likewise grounded in common sense: “What will it cost?” “How will we pay for it?” and “Is the public option a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system, just as Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank suggests?”

Cost is probably the biggest objection. When Mr. Obama first proposed his overhaul, he justified it on the grounds that it would bring costs down. Now the Congressional Budget Office says costs are likely to go up. So what does the president do? He calls the CBO director onto the Oval Office carpet—a virtually unprecedented White House intrusion into a nonpartisan congressional institution.

“President Obama says that both sides agree we need to lower costs, promote choice and provide coverage for every American,” says Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a free-market health-care think tank. “But he never confronts the simple fact that the measures he’s supporting achieve none of those goals. Instead of debating, the White House attacks anyone who raises a question.”

Of course, when fundamental human rights are at stake, it seems churlish to worry about little things such as the price tag. Or higher taxes. When it comes to the Holy Grail of universality, liberal intentions are far more important than actual outcomes.

“Think of public education,” says James Capretta, a health-care expert at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center. “They want to do for health care what they’ve done for education—establish a government-run, universal system. Once in place, they will defend such a system whether or not it delivers the results it promised.”

In his inaugural address, Mr. Obama dinged his predecessor when he asserted that his administration would “restore science to its rightful place.” The implication was unmistakable: In place of rigid religious orthodoxies, Team Obama would be clear, cool and pragmatic.

It turns out that the president has his own orthodoxies. These may owe more to his liberalism than to his faith. But they help explain the tenor of the attacks on those who dare question them—and the growing prospects for a major defeat in Congress on the president’s signature issue.

Want to know what makes this particular op/ed particularly ironic? Read the bio of the author:

William McGurn is a Vice President at News Corporation who writes speeches for CEO Rupert Murdoch. Previously he served as Chief Speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Amazing how things change, isn't it?