The de rigueur euphemism for socialized medicine is, of course, “universal health care.” The effectiveness with which this term has been deployed can be measured by the ever increasing percentage of Americans who declare themselves in favor of a government takeover of the health care system. The electorate, having been convinced that our delivery system is broken and that “universal” means “everyone gets care,” is pretty much sold.
Naturally, there are plenty of politicians willing to exploit the public’s credulity on this issue. John Edwards has a plan, and Barack Obama has a solution as well. And there is, of course, Hillary. All of these saviors want to foist some version of socialized medicine on the country. Before we swallow that pill, however, it might be useful to look at how “universal” such systems really are. As it happens, the international press is rife with reports of how socialized medicine performs in the real world, and the picture isn’t pretty.
An illustrative example can be found in an article about cancer patients in The Scotsman. Like the socialized systems in Canada and continental Europe, the National Health Service of Great Britain is unable to keep up with cutting edge treatments for any number of illnesses. The result, in this case, is that cancer patients will be denied a life-prolonging drug because the commissars of the NHS have deemed it “too expensive.”
For those who have fallen for the canard that American health care is somehow inferior to socialized systems, consider the following quote by a consulting oncologist mentioned in the piece: “If you lived in North America you could get these drugs, but not in Scotland.” It would appear that health care in the U.S. is more “universal” than it is in the U.K.
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