The Fix Is In

City Journal ^ | 22 March, 2010 | Theodore Dalrymple

[T.L.Sink]

Americans would do well to ponder a recent admisssion by a former minister in the Blair government. Lord Warner said that while spending on Britain's National Health Service had increased by 60 percent, its output had DECREASED by 4 percent. No doubt while the spending of Soviet-style bureaucracies like the NHS is more easily measurable than its output, the remark certainly accords with the experiences of citizens, who see no improvement. On the contrary, while the Service has taken on 400,000 new staff members - continuity of medical care has been all but extinguished! Nobody now expects to see the same doctor on successive occasions, in the hospital or anywhere else. British doctors have accepted money on condition they accept - as quietly as mice - increasing government interference in their work. When you see a family doctor in Britain, he is more likely to do what the government thinks he ought to do than what he thinks is right.

[T.L.Sink]

Dr. Dalrymple, as a practicing physician, warns us that what he has seen and experienced is exactly what ObamaCare is about to bring to us. His familiarity with these disastrous socialistic schemes corresponds to those of Margaret Thatcher who famously said: "Socialism always fails because eventually it runs out of other people's money."

[mamelukesabre]

There will be no repealing obamacare. We are stuck with it for as long as our government remains in place...and that will be for as long as people have food and jobs.

[fightinJAG]

That’s about the most plain-spoken damnation as I’ve read on the subject yet.

Sigh.

[T.L.Sink]

Republicans may not have the votes to repeal Obamacare by overriding Obama’s veto. However, I’ve heard several conservatives point out that if Republicans gain a simple majority they can DEFUND the program. Remember, the taxes start soon and the “benefits” late. For example, the “pre-existing conditions” provision won’t begin until 2014. Also, the polls are showing more public opposition every day as people discover how it’s really going to impact healthcare and the economy. They don’t want any part of it.

[mamelukesabre]

I don’t believe for a minute that ALL republicans are against obamacare. It’s easy to vote against something when you know it’s going to pass anyway and when the opposition is for it. I think if republicans get a majority, you will start hearing republicans saying obamacare isn’t really all that bad.

[uncommonsense]

We have plenty of evidence around the world, as well as our own back yard, of the inevitable degradation in quality of our health care system.

Therefore, leftists / democRATs are either 1) blithering idiots, 2) exceptionally ignorant, 3) criminally malicious, or 4) all of the above.

No matter the reason, their extraordinary investment and efforts over several generations across multiple fronts has finally set us up for a mighty fall from a constitutional republic that values individual liberty - to a collectivist society, centrally controlled by appointed elitists.