Even the New York Times Fears Socialized Medicine

Washington Free Beacon ^ | September 17, 2014 | Stephanie Wang

[lbryce]

The New York Times laid out some of the problems with socialized medicine in Britain in an article published Wednesday.

The Times points to a case in which a five-year-old boy with a brain tumor set off an international hunt for the boy and his family. Critics of the National Health Service say Britain far overstepped its boundaries after it arrested the boy’s parents.

NHS denied five-year-old Ashya King an advanced cancer treatment known as proton team therapy for his brain tumor. In a desperate attempt to get treatment for their son, Ashya’s parents traveled to Madrid to sell their holiday home. The parents took their son out of a Hampshire hospital without permission.

British police began an international hunt for the parents and issued a European arrest warrant, according to the Times. Spanish police launched a social media campaign to find them. The police tweeted an alert for the parents and received a response within minutes saying the family’s minivan had been spotted. The parents were detained within hours after quick coordination between British and Spanish authorities.

[lbryce]

I've been taken by surprise as to the reason the couple was the focus of an international hunt for the boy and his family. It seems the arrest was caused by the parents' removing their son from the hospital without permission,looking for a cure for his brain tumor, the procedure denied by Britain's socialized medicine. Sounds like some science fiction scenario, that will end up the same way here in the US.

When a European arrest warrant was issued recently for Brett and Naghemeh King, who took their cancer-stricken child out of a Hampshire hospital in the south of England without permission.

[allendale]

Where medicine is socialized, your life is in the hands of a clerk.

[GraceG]

IF and or WHEN ebola hits the UK may God help them all....

I have heard horror stories about UK hospital sanitation.....

Just sayin...

[Blood of Tyrants]

Let em get this right; the British NHS refused to treat him but they wouldn’t let the parents take him out of the hospital either?

[Lazamataz]

This case aside, the headline in no way reflects the reality. The NYT gently coddles and murmurs, spooning the entire time, with Communist Medicine. It mentions this case as a one-off.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The Times has had a correspondent in London since the Queen was named Victoria. I don’t believe that the problems with socialized medicine are just now dawning on them.

[EDINVA]

I don’t think the article says they wouldn’t *treat* him but that they wouldn’t authorize his getting an advanced, probably experimental, treatment.

I don’t understand why the parents couldn’t just get permission to take him out of the hospital, then take off for Spain (or wherever they thought they could get help).

[Missouri gal]

There have already been a bunch of cases in the US where a hospital tried to overrule the family's right to seek life-saving treatment elsewhere. Now the feds get involved, on the side of death, usually,

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

When you give something valuable away for free, you soon find that demand exceeds the supply you can afford. There are several ways governments can balance the books — none of them pleasant. These methods include:

* slow listing or rapid delisting of specific services (what the British did in this case);
* rationing by wait list;
* rationing by reducing the number of health care professionals (we tried this in Canada, in the 1990’s);
* rationing by “Death Panel”;
* killing patents who become too expensive to maintain (whether it’s called “euthanasia”, “assisted suicide”, “death with dignity”, etc. — it all helps keep costs down);

The Doctor Evil Institute will continue to devise more methods, as required.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Why should the parents have to get permission from the government to treat their own child? This is a case of a nanny government thinking that it knows better what to do with the child that his parents.

[miss marmelstein]

But we all celebrated the veteran of WWII who escaped his British nursing home (without permission!!) to attend D-Day memorials this year.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

>But 0bamacare isn’t socialized medicine!
>There aren’t any such things as death panels!
>Nobody said you could keep your doctor, and if they did, it was because they knew they had to lie to get the bill passed, so it’s OK.
>When they said you costs would go down, they didn’t mean using dollars, they meant societal costs.

It’s only the most Goddamned rotten thing that’s ever been done to the American People.

[EDINVA]

I think the point is that if you have socialized medicine, you assign your ‘rights’ to those who control it. You no longer HAVE rights.

[SteveH]

[I believe it may be proton beam therapy, not proton team therapy]

[ArmstedFragg]

I believe they’re talking about proton beam therapy, rather than proton team therapy. It’s a concentrated and precise form of radiation therapy that had only limited availability in the US until about 5 years ago. US early adopters are now using something called CyberKnife.