Tory Crony, Daniel Hannan, Criticises the NHS on Fox News.

[Big Orange]

Ok, this great ain't it, having British Conservative Party member has an interview with that loony, Glenn Beck, over on Fox News:

Daniel Hannan on Health Care Debate
Monday, August 10, 2009

This is a rush transcript from "Glenn Beck," August 7, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

GLENN BECK, HOST: European socialized health care — it's not spooky or riddled with problems. No, it's not. And it's not going to be more real if we adopt it here in the U.S. It's not going to be sunshine and lollipops.

Socialized medicine. Some will take a counter to that and say, "No, Glenn, I think it stinks on ice." But to find that out, you have to talk to somebody who knows the system firsthand.

Daniel Hannan. He is a member of European Parliament from southeast England.

Big fan, sir. Welcome.

DANIEL HANNAN, MEMBER OF EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: Thank you.

BECK: Nice to have you here.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: Now, do you think you could stay and run — you can't run for president but, you know, you could just run for Congress or Senate.
You have a lot of fans here in America.

HANNAN: Yes. Certainly, I'm a really big fan of your Constitution and I'm a pretty strict interpretationist about it. So, the presidency is not.

BECK: You are one of the only people, politician, that I've heard in a long time that say you are a fan of the Constitution. It's not real popular right now here in America.

HANNAN: But, you know, I'm maybe not popular among all the politicians.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: But, look, it works. I mean, look at what is you live with. It's made you rich and free and independent.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: And it has driven those values to every country of the world.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: and so that the world owes you something.

BECK: Here we — here we have a congress and a president that are not listening to the American people and they're not listening and reading the Constitution, and about to deliver us the universal right to medicine that is just fantastic in your country. Tell me about how great universal health care is.

HANNAN: Well, I mean, the most striking thing about it is that you are very often just sent back to the queue. You turn up with a complaint, with an ailment and you are told, "OK, how about October of next year" or whatever it is. And then you are not able to supplement your treatment, your state's health care treatment with any private money of your own. People who had conditions and tried to buy drugs independently, they were told that the health treatment would be stopped.

Now, I had a friend of mine. This is an amazing story. A friend of mine broke his ankle. And he went to the accident and emergency. And it was Friday night.

Now, one of our national traditions is that on Friday nights we all get drunk and have fights with each other. So, there was a long queue of people to get in.

And he said, "Look, I'm in real pain, can I have some painkillers while I'm waiting." And they said, "No, get to the back of the line." He said, "Look, I'd buy them." And they said, I think they became very aggressive, "What do you mean you're going to buy them. This is the National Health Service, so we don't have any provision for independent purchase of medicine."

So, that's the — that's the mentality.

BECK: I can't — I can't imagine what Americans will do when they have to wait. I mean, we just put this up on the screen. Cataract surgery, you have to wait eight month. Hip replacement, 11 months.

You know, you may be free, but what's your quality of life?

HANNAN: Sure.

BECK: You have to wait for 11 months.

HANNAN: Sure.

BECK: Knee replacement, wait for 12 months. Herniated disc, five months.

HANNAN: And if you can't work during that period, then, you're losing income. So, it's not really free, is it? And, in any case, it's not free because you're paying for it through your taxes.

BECK: We just found out that — and God bless him. He's a — he's a guy I disagree with on, you know, on almost everything, and he is my senator. But I don't wish him ill. But we just found that Senator Chris Dodd has prostrate cancer. I'd like to make a challenge to Senator Chris Dodd to go over to your country and be treated with prostrate cancer.

Here in the U.S., five-year relative survival rate is 100 percent. In Canada, it's 95 percent. In the U.K., it's 77 percent.

HANNAN: Quite right. That is an extraordinary figure. You think of those statistics and maybe that explains why — as I understand it — your senators and congressmen are not proposing to be part of this system themselves.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: Listen, our system, our NHS came out of a peculiar time, we were basically under full mobilization when we invented this, right? It was.

(CROSSTALK)

HANNAN: It's Word War II, 1944. So, it was a time when we had food rationing, when everything had been nationalized, when he had hugely high taxes, you know, because everything had been conscripted into the war.
That was the product — that was the thinking that led to the state health care system.

I find it incredible that a free people living in a country dedicated and founded in the cause of independence and freedom can seriously be thinking about adopting such a system in peacetime and massively expanding the role of the state when there's no need.

BECK: Because they would say that this is going to save us money.

HANNAN: Well, you know it is the single biggest item of our government budget. And, it's — you know, the state generally doesn't do things as efficiently as the market does. Of course, it doesn't. If you know that you're getting the same treatment without paying for it, you have no incentive to keep costs down.

BECK: Daniel, what is — I mean, have you been — do you follow here in America at what's happening on the ground with our politicians?
Because they are currently getting hammered by the people as they're coming home. These congressmen are coming home.

And I hope to God, that, Congress, you learn from this, because it's only going to get much, much worse for you.

What could they possibly be thinking?

HANNAN: Well, I mean, I don't know. But I just say, as an elected representative myself, no politician can disregard his constituents'
opinion. And there is dishonor in an elected politician listening to what his people want. That's what we call democracy, right? There's no kind of weakness. I suppose how this is meant to work.

So, I hope that people watching this program, whichever side they're on, are going to make their views felt and I hope that their representatives will listen to them over the summer vacation and come back.

I mean, quite apart from anything else, I just wonder at a time like this how the U.S. can afford something of this scale. I mean, things are being different.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: They're telling us that we can't afford not to do it. They're telling us this lie that somehow or another, if we do this, this is going to solve all of our problems with our debt and deficit. It's going to — somehow or another, we're going to save so much in health care. I can't imagine how.

You deny people service at a certain age for certain procedures, do you not?

HANNAN: I mean, the worst — the worst thing is to be elderly on a system like ours.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: Actually, to be fair, it's not so bad with kids. You know, it generally tends to reflect social values. But we have got — I can tell you horror stories about elderly people kind of left starving in wards, you know?

And the amazing thing is, you know, why do we put up with it? The reason we put up with it for so long is because it has become such a huge system. It's got such an enormous bureaucracy based around it, right?

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: We have 1.4 million people employed by the National Health Service. It is the third biggest employer in the world after the Red Army in China and the Indian National Railways. Most of those 1.4 million people are administrators, that the managers outnumber the doctors and nurses. And that is the electoral bloc that makes it almost impossible to get rid of.

So, if you do this thing, if — you know, you're going to decide.

BECK: Yes.

HANNAN: But if you do it, don't imagine that you can come back and change your minds a couple of years from now.

BECK: That's why I say, America, you cannot let this thing pass.
You cannot let any of this structure in, because you think the third largest employer in...

HANNAN: In the world.

BECK: …in the world, do you think — now you understand why they want it so badly. That's why. This is going to change the face of America, and they'll do it forever.

Daniel, thank you very much.

HANNAN: Thank you, Glenn.

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Weazel News

Here is a loose overview on who Daniel Hannan is. One more reason in a lengthening list of reasons why I won't be voting Tory. And some of the woes associated with the NHS can be attributed to the Tories back in the 80s and 90s, with the outside contracting of dubious cleaning staff and overstaffing in the NHS bureaucracy. New Labour's problem was/is their excessive taxing and spending on the NHS' symptoms, rather than properly fix its underlining problems (the Democrats will probably fall into a similar trap with UHC). Oh, and guess what Mr. Hannan, I broke my ankle too and I was rushed into A&E, getting surgery within 48 hours, even getting a small shot of morphine; my story contradicts yours.

[Darth Wong]

The Republicans have been very smart to focus the debate entirely on what could possibly go wrong in a socialized system, with almost zero discussion of how a privatized system would necessarily be immune to these same problems (if not worse) at any given expenditure level.

[The Spartan]

Does anyone ever bring up the outcomes? It seems to me that the fact that US lags behind even Cuba on infant deaths should be beaten into the heads of everyone. Then there's cancer survival rate, heart disease survival rate, etc., etc.

[Colonel Olrik]

We have 1.4 million people employed by the National Health Service. It is the third biggest employer in the world after the Red Army in China and the Indian National Railways. Most of those 1.4 million people are administrators, that the managers outnumber the doctors and nurses. And that is the electoral bloc that makes it almost impossible to get rid of.

If only people weren't morons and got these little ironies.

[Darth Wong]

We have 1.4 million people employed by the National Health Service. It is the third biggest employer in the world after the Red Army in China and the Indian National Railways. Most of those 1.4 million people are administrators, that the managers outnumber the doctors and nurses. And that is the electoral bloc that makes it almost impossible to get rid of.

If only people weren't morons and got these little ironies.

I wonder how many people are employed by the health insurance industry in the US. That entire industry is effectively administrative overhead from the perspective of national health care: 100% of its profits, its personnel, its executives, everything. It's all bureaucratic waste, if we use the same approach they're applying to socialized health care. It's not even all the waste, because individual service providers have their own service staff. In fact, every doctor I've ever known had his own receptionist, which means there's at least one non-doctor person in every doctor's office, and that's administrative too.

[Dartzap]

One of the most annoying things to be affecting the NHS at the moment is privitisating by increments. The whole contracting out thing is a pain in the arse which just lowers standards and makes the staff feel like shit.

[Jade Falcon]

You know, it's funny how some of the Tories say there are huge waiting lists of months. I'll be the first to admit that the NHS is not perfect, but come on.

Here's an example. A couple of months ago I was feeling really breathless, this was shortly after a bout of what seemed like a really severe flu. I made an appointment with my local GP and got taken that day. He told me to come back later that day, and get a heart trace taken. After that happened I was sent up to the local hospital and taken into A&E. I spent just under a week in the hospital after being diagnosed with an irregular and fast heartbeat, along with possible heart tissue damage. During that time I had top class care, and since being discharged I have been attending cardiac clinics, warfarin clinics, physio and so on.

Does this sound like an NHS like this Tory plonker is describing. Granted, not every Health trust is exactly the same across the country, but to hear people like him, you'd think there were corpses littering the corridors.

[Darth Wong]

Part of the problem is that they look for examples of conditions which someone can live with for quite a while, but which are very annoying. In a consumer-driven free market system, these would get taken care of quickly for people who can afford to pay for treatment, and not at all for others. In a socialistic system, they will get taken care of for everyone, but they will not be considered top priority so they might have to wait. Hence, an opportunity for proponents of private health care to score points. But it's fundamentally dishonest; they're focusing on positives but ignoring negatives for one scheme and doing the opposite for the other.

And of course, in order to exaggerate the severity of the problem, they merely need point out that such procedures can be considered high-priority in some cases, thus implying (without explicitly stating) that even high-priority cases are routinely treated as low-priority cases and shuffled off into long waiting lists. In order to bolster this interpretation, they need only quote individuals who claim that their particular cases were high-priority, which anyone can do.

[Rye]

It should be noted that the Conservatives to some extent rebuked Hannan in response to his twattery:

By James Kirkup, Political Correspondent
Published: 5:03PM BST 13 Aug 2009

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said Mr Hannan was wrong in his criticism of the NHS. Andrew Lansley, the Conservative shadow health secretary, accused the MEP of presenting a “negative and partial” view of the NHS in his contribution to the US debate about health care.

Conservative US Republicans opposed to President Barack Obama’s health care plans have used the NHS as an example of “socialised” medicine.

US commentators have made a number of claims about the poor quality and efficiency of NHS care. Some have suggested that elderly people with chronic conditions are effectively left to die for cost reasons. Others have described the British system as "evil" and "Orwellian."

Mr Hannan was in the US earlier this week and in a Fox News interview, he supported some of the Republican criticisms of the NHS.

He said: “I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. We have a system where the most salient facts of it you get huge waiting lists, you have bad survival rates and you would much rather fall ill in the US.”

Mr Hannan is a popular figure among grassroots Tories because of his strong right-wing views. His Telegraph.co.uk blog and his public harangue of Gordon Brown in the European Parliament earlier this year also made him a political celebrity in the US.

However, his agenda is at odds with the modernising message of Mr Cameron, who has repeatedly promised that the NHS would be the top priority of a Conservative Government.

As Mr Hannan’s comments spread across the internet, Mr Lansley released a statement defending the NHS and rebuking his party colleague.

Mr Lansley said: "There are millions of people who are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS.

"It does them and the NHS a disservice for Daniel Hannan to give Americans such a negative and partial view. That we can access health care free at point of use, based on need, is something others envy.”

Mr Cameron said he did not agree with Mr Hannan's remarks. Mr Cameron said: "I support the NHS 100% and the Conservative Party supports the NHS 100 per cent.

On his Telegraph.co.uk blog, Mr Hannan made clear he was speaking for himself, not his party.

He said: “I am not the Conservative Party’s health care spokesman. I’m fond of Andrew Lansley, and I strongly support David Cameron as party leader. On this issue, though, I disagree with both of them.”

The US debate about the NHS has triggered a growing backlash in Britain. Senior doctors and the scientist Stephen Hawking have publicly defended the NHS.

The Prime Minister yesterday added his name to a campaign on Twitter, the micro-blogging site, in defence of the NHS.

Mr Brown’s message said: "PM: NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there."

Governments traditionally do not to intervene in the domestic politics of other nations. But the Prime Minister and his Cabinet are irritated by the attacks on the NHS and the British Embassy in Washington DC has been instructed to counter “inaccuracies” about the NHS in the US media.

[Darth Wong]

Back in 2004, I myself got on a six month waiting list for a hernia procedure: an operation that I could have gotten in a US facility in a weekend visit. Why did I wait six months? Because I specifically wanted it done at Shouldice, which is the best hernia clinic in the world, and I could afford to wait: it was not a life threatening condition. I could have gotten it done quicker if I had it done at another place. I could have gotten it done quicker if I paid thousands of dollars to a US clinic, as if I was inclined to do that. But I don't really need to explain all that, do I? I could just say "six month waiting list" and "could have gotten it done in a week in the US" and leave it at that.

If I were some Conservative douchebag idiot, I could do precisely that: I could rant and rave about that one time I was on a long waiting list and get on American TV. I could talk about how a hernia is a potentially life-threatening condition (even though my particular hernia was only a minor irritation, but there's no need to say that on TV), and how I was in pain (periodic minor irritation is technically pain), and presto! I could be the next superstar of FOXNews and the Conservative talking-points circuit.

[Tanasinn]

It's almost to the point that I want my countrymen to suffer through lack of medical care purely out of spite at their gullibility. The people that complain the most seem to often be the ones who stand to gain the most.

[aerius]

I wonder how many people are employed by the health insurance industry in the US. That entire industry is effectively administrative overhead from the perspective of national health care: 100% of its profits, its personnel, its executives, everything. It's all bureaucratic waste, if we use the same approach they're applying to socialized health care. It's not even all the waste, because individual service providers have their own service staff. In fact, every doctor I've ever known had his own receptionist, which means there's at least one non-doctor person in every doctor's office, and that's administrative too.

Thanks to the BLS we have the answers for that. The US has around 260k managers out of a bit over 7 million total workers in the healthcare industry. According to the stats on the NHS website, they have 40k managers for just under 1.4 million total workers in the NHS. Yup, lots more management overhead in the US, is anyone surprised?

You gotta love those fucking liars who can't do basic grade school math.

[Rahvin]

Using population numbers from Google, that means the US has roughly 23.02 health workers per 1000 citizens, and the UK has roughly 22.97 health workers per 1000 citizens.

On a per capita basis, that's actually a surprisingly small difference given the inefficiency of the US system.

But then again, since the US system doesn't cover 47 million ( 15% of the population) people at all, and underinsures another 25 million (another 8%), I suppose that isn't all that surprising after all.

[Teebs]

The European Parliament seems to get a lot of the main parties' extremists shunted into it. No one gives a damn what MEPs say which is the only reason why Hannan could get away with saying that. There's a reason why the NHS is described as the third rail of British politics. Politicians that criticise it suddenly find themselves very unpopular because despite its problems the populations *hate* the idea of getting rid of it.

[PainRack]

Personal ancedotes have another problem too. False perceptions and not getting the full story.

Here's my personal experience. I was attached to an A&E for my nurse training and when attached to the triage area, one of the case was a patient in pain over her ankle. Its obvious that it IS very bad, and should be very painful.

What we did was the SN appropiately triaged the patient, asked whether you would want painkillers for the pain and asked them to wait before their queue came up. They were checked on every two hours or so, albeit, just a quick glance to make sure that people in the queue don't collapse and become an emergency type.

5 hours or so later, the husband blew up and became confronting the staff over the long wait, the suffering of the wife and the pain including the claim that no one has attended the wife and offered pain relief.

The problem was....... We did. At the triage area.

Given other problems in my current workplace, this incident has utterly turned me off personal anecdotes of healthcare problems. People in pain and suffering do not have a balanced perspective, period..

[Simplicius]

On the other hand, the NHS itself is getting tired of the bullshit:

UK health system hits back at US critics

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER – 1 day ago

LONDON — Britain's health care service says it is sick of being lied about.

Pilloried by right-wing critics of President Barack Obama's health care plan, Britain's National Health Service, known here as the NHS, is fighting back.

"People have been saying some untruths in the States," a spokesman for Britain Department of Health said in a telephone interview. "There's been all these ridiculous claims made by the American health lobby about Obama's health care plan ... and they've used the NHS as an example. A lot of it has been untrue."

He spoke anonymously in line with department policy.

As the debate over how best to look after American patients rages on, Britain's socialized health care system has increasingly found itself being drawn into the argument. Critics of the Obama administration's plan to overhaul US health care say the president is seeking to model the U.S. system on that of Britain or Canada — places they paint as countries where patients linger for months on waiting lists and are forbidden from paying for their own medication.

A Republican National Committee ad said that in the U.K. "individuals lose their right to make their own health care choices." Another ad launched earlier this month by the anti-tax group Club for Growth claimed that government bureaucrats in Britain had calculated six months of life to be worth $22,750. "Under their socialized system, if your treatment costs more, you're out of luck," the ad says, as footage of an elderly man weeping at a woman's bedside alternate with clips of the Union Jack and Big Ben.

The online attacks on Britain's health care system have been paired with strident criticism from Republican lawmakers.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republic Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy's, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old. Another Republican, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, said that the U.K. and Canada "don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently."

The criticism, widely covered in the U.K. media, has clearly stung Britain's left-leaning Labour government. The Department of Health took the unusual step of contacting The Associated Press and e-mailing it a three-page rebuttal to what it said were misconceptions about the NHS being bandied about in the U.S. media — each one followed with the words: "Not true."

At the top of the list was the idea that a patient in his late 70s would not be treated for a brain tumor because he was too old — a transparent reference to Grassley's comments about Kennedy.

And what of Republicans' claim that British patients are robbed of their medical choices? False again, the department said.

"Everyone who is cared for by the NHS in England has formal rights to make choices about the service that they receive," the rebuttal said.

Then followed a fact sheet comparing selected statistics such as health spending per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy, and more. Each one showed England outperforming its trans-Atlantic counterpart.

The British government offers health care for free at the point of need, a service pioneered by Labour in 1948. In the six decades since, its promise of universal medical care, from cradle to grave, is taken for granted by Britons to such an extent that politicians — even fiscal conservatives — are loathe to attack it.

But the NHS faces significant challenges, not least a multibillion pound (dollar) deficit predicted to open up over the next five years. It has its critics too, particularly cancer patients who complain that the government refuses to cover costlier drugs, leaving those who need expensive treatments to pay for them out of pocket.

Nevertheless, many in the British press bristled at the criticism from America's right wing.

"How dare the Republicans bad-mouth our free health care system?" The Guardian columnist Michele Hanson wrote Wednesday. "If I'd been born in the U.S., I'd probably be dead by now."

This article has made it around a bit - I first read it in one of Maine's two big dailies - but what I haven't seen is the actual list of rebuttals the NHS sent.

Also, Investor's Business Daily are grade-A twats:

Hawking cited in healthcare debate

[snip]

As Mr Obama presented the US's highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, to Professor Hawking in a ceremony at the White House yesterday, Investor's Business Daily declared the disabled scientist would not receive treatment under Britain's healthcare system.

The newspaper's editorial claimed Mr Obama's proposal for a government-run health insurance scheme similar to that in Britain would punish the elderly and disabled.

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless," it said.

The reference to Professor Hawking, who is paralysed and speaks with a voicebox synthesiser, coincides with claims denied by Mr Obama that he favours "death panels" to help cut costs by determining whether people in his condition should receive treatment.

As debate on the proposals becomes more hysterical, Britain's public health system has been held up as an example of why the US should not embrace a public model for people who cannot afford private insurance.

Professor Hawking, the Cambridge University professor and author of A Brief History of Time, was quick to point out that he was, in fact, British and lived in his home country.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he said.

"I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

The newspaper has issued a correction, noting Professor Hawking does "live in the UK".

[/snip]

[Big Orange]

I've seen some of the scary, saccharine, and dishonest anti-NHS propaganda films on Sky News.

And former Deputy Prime Minister John "Two Jags" Prescott pipes up:

[The Spartan]

I would bet good money, if I had any , that only a small handful of people in America will see that.

[Dartzap]

I would bet good money, if I had any , that only a small handful of people in America will see that.

Probably just as well - he's not normally that comprehensible.

[Crazedwraith]

I can't believe the article BO posted from the Australian. Where do they think Hawking came from? Did they think he was actually an american?

[Darth Wong]

I can't believe the article BO posted from the Australian. Where do they think Hawking came from? Did they think he was actually an american?

They don't give a shit. They obviously make up their editorials the way most of us write a private E-mail, rather than treating it as a serious professional duty to get all their facts straight before publication.

[frogcurry]

Back in 2004, I myself got on a six month waiting list for a hernia procedure: an operation that I could have gotten in a US facility in a weekend visit. Why did I wait six months? Because I specifically wanted it done at Shouldice, which is the best hernia clinic in the world, and I could afford to wait: it was not a life threatening condition. I could have gotten it done quicker if I had it done at another place. I could have gotten it done quicker if I paid thousands of dollars to a US clinic, as if I was inclined to do that.

Similarly, if you were a UK citizen, then depending on the waiting list situation in your Trust area you might have a bit of wait for your operation although probably a fair bit less than 6 months (at least in my local Trust). But you could still skip the queue and go private for an operation like that if you wanted, with BUPA or one of the other private healthcare providers.

The NICE system of managing drug costs by assessing them for effectiveness is also one of the great achievements, and is being imitated by a lot of other countries, so the US criticism of the NHS as tight-fisted seems a bit rich. If you have money or insurance, then you can get the most expensive anti-cancer drug in the world if you want it just like in the US. But if you don't have money then you get what the NHS can afford, assessed on a cost-benefit basis. Sometimes its a little harsh on people for that reason, there was a thing last year with a kidney cancer drug that was pretty brutal as they'd ruled against it for cost reasons, but at least you know that the healthcare you get is standardised and guaranteed to be the best that can be afforded by the system. And in that case, those who were denied the drug for free could still buy it and get given it by their doctor privately. The system has also been used as a basis for better negociation with drug companies for new drugs, i.e. the NHS only pays if the drug is shown to have benefits in saving lives, but in exchange for taking the risk during the trial period the drug company can get its product on the NICE list if it proves effective.

[Darth Wong]

That's the funny thing: nobody wants to talk about cost management of health-care because they want to cling to the notion that cost is no object. And maybe it isn't, when you're talking about a wealthy person. But for everyone else, cost very much is an object, and the free market is not good at reducing total systemic costs. It might theoretically be able to reduce per-procedure costs (although there is precious little evidence that this is actually happening), but the nature of capitalist markets is to constantly grow year-over-year, ideally at a rate greater than population growth. In fact, if an individual health-care corporation was not reporting steady revenue growth, its shareholders would revolt.

[LapsedPacifist]

I suspect that a certain amount of resistance is people afraid of losing their notion of quackery to a government run system. They won't be able to self diagnose, pressure a doctor, and get what they want done under a socialized system.

[Darth Wong]

Morons can still do that, I assure you. My old landlord used to run to the doctor whenever his kid had a cold or flu, and demand antibiotics. The doctor would usually refuse, since antibiotics are pointless against most colds and flus and would only do harm. So they would go to doctor after doctor until they finally got one who would give out the antibiotics they demanded.