Posted on 07/27/2017 7:05:45 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the father of a 2-month-old, I can only imagine the horror the parents of 11-month-old Charlie Gard are going through. No words, no thoughts or prayers, or even time, will be able to wipe away their pain.
But that pain did not have to be so great, and it may not have had to have been at all were it not for the single-payer health care system in the United Kingdom and the bureaucrats politicians who rallied to keep Charlie a prisoner to it.
Gard was born with a rare genetic disease that was working to destroy his body. A few months after his birth he wasn’t able to live without machines feeding and breathing for him. All medical professionals involved said there was little chance anything could help Charlie.
But note that phrase: little chance.
As a new father, I know there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect my daughter or make her better if, God forbid, something horrible were to happen. Charlie’s parents, as would most parents, felt the same way.
Unfortunately for the Gards, their government didn’t agree.
Often held up as the gold standard of single-payer health care, the National Health Services in the UK is great if you get the flu or break your arm, but it’s not so good if you are afflicted with something that requires serious treatment.
The NHS had reached the end of its “compassion” with Charlie and decided it would be better for him if they stopped paying to keep him alive. The family, naturally, fought it.
What business are family medical decisions to government? In a single-payer system where government controls who gets what care and for how long, every decision is the business of government. When the faceless bureaucracy decides you’ve had enough, you’re done. You can appeal, somewhat, but you’re not appealing to some neutral arbiter, you’re appealing to the same government that denied you in the first place.
Your chances, under those circumstances, are not good.
In Charlie Gard’s case, his parents weren’t asking for extraordinary measures that would cost taxpayers untold millions. They simply were asking to be set free – to be allowed to take their child to the United States for a long-shot experimental treatment. They raised the money on their own – more than $1.6 million worth – so it would have cost the government nothing. Still, they were denied at every turn.
Why would a government block parents from a treatment it didn’t have to pay for? The answer highlights one of the more glaring problems with the Democratic Party’s dream of bringing single-payer health care to this country.
You see, the money was never the issue. As I said, the parents raised the money on their own, it would have cost nothing. It’s the concept.
Single-payer health care exists under the banner of compassion and access, but it actually functions as a form of government control. The government sets the prices and decides what treatments are available based on the price. If a procedure could work but is too expensive, tough. Same goes for drug treatments.
There’s a reason we in the United States are on the leading edge of new treatments and therapeutic drugs, often seeing innovations hit the market months or years before they’re available elsewhere. And it’s not government involvement. There’s also a reason the world’s rich come to the US when they’re seriously ill and don’t stay in their “universal health care” countries, and it’s not out of a desire to pay for something they could get for “free” back home.
No, part of the reason the UK couldn’t let Charlie have a chance at life was because if they let him have one, others would want one too. And people would start to wonder why they aren’t getting the latest and greatest medicine on the planet. They might start demanding more from a government unwilling to give it to them. Which is the problem with single-payer health care – you are a ward of the state, not an individual.
The individuals in these countries are irrelevant, disposable, unless they’re rich, politically powerful or royalty. It’s the collective that matters. If members of the collective start to question why they have to wait months for a routine procedure when the United States can deliver it nearly on demand, or why some procedures simply aren’t available to them, well, that would lead to trouble.
When everyone has to wait, no one is aware that they’re waiting, and when everyone’s care is rationed…you get the idea.
It’s the same rationale that kept the US media from reporting on Charlie’s struggle or asking any Democrat whether they thought his parents should be allowed to save his life – both support a single-payer system for us. The agenda must be protected, the narrative must be advanced – which is how you end up with the networks spending more time talking about the death of a baby whale than Charlie’s plight.
Allowing Charlie Gard’s parents to turn over that last stone, no matter how unlikely a positive outcome may have been, would highlight the many stones a single-payer health system leaves unturned for the sake of the bottom line. Insurers need this secret kept to maintain as much of the status quo as possible. And they are willing to kill to keep it that way.
Could Charlie’s life have been saved? Unlikely. But thanks to the UK’s National Health Service, we’ll never know. The government machine managed to delay any hope for that beyond the point of no return. Make no mistake about it, although his disease will be Charlie Gard’s cause of death, it will be the system trying to protect itself that ultimately killed him.
‘The NHS in the UK is great if you get the flu or break your arm’
Or, if you are healthy. That way, you only have to pay, through your extra 15-20% taxes, for everybody else’s health care.
The tragic story of how what was supposed to be “liberal” instead charged into the jaws of the most heartless illiberality.
In this Country, the liberals would've murdered him BEFORE BIRTH. For him to be born alive with the birth defects he has would subject the doctors, and more importantly the insurance companies, to lawsuits, so his parents would've been pressured into aborting him.
And it’s not like it happened only there. Terri Schiavo is the case here, she died in part for the lack of a spoon.
It’s the British subjects at fault and all their greed for social programs.
I really have to wonder about that... I have a cousin in law that was Diagnosed with Stage IV GBM, brain cancer, pretty much the worst one. He is married with 2 kids 34. Living in Gloucester.
that was 4 years ago, and he is doing pretty well all things considered. His treatment as far as I can tell has been just fine, or at least what they can do for him...he gets whatever procedures he needs in a fairly timely manner as far as I can tell...
Socialism always leads to "questions" about "useless eaters" or "lives unworthy of living" ... and these "questions" always require a "final solution".
This stain is on the citizens of the UK for not voicing out against it. Apparently in a socialized system there are “acceptable losses”. This child was imprisoned against the wishes of the parents and sentiments of the whole western world.
And it’s coming to our neighborhood next if Obamacare is not repealed very soon.
“Liberals” ought to be careful what they categorically damn, because that has a way of greeting them from a mirror.
And another thing that is never addressed......medical research. There’s a reason that the USA is on the cutting edge of medical research. In countries with Sociaized Medicine, when the working people are being taxed to the hilt, there isn’t money for charity......like the charity that Americans give for medical research. Our research benefits the world as other countries also use our means of fighting diseases, such as different cancers. Domestic charities are practically non-existent in countries with Socialized Medicine. Americans are very generous in funding charities that pay for research. When you donate to a hospital, the money goes into research. What will fall by the wayside, if taxes on Americans are raised another 15-20%, to pay for everybody else’s health care? Medical research........
He “lucked out” for now. Something is always better than nothing. The problem is letting it cast a halo over other issues.
I always add, ‘Terri Schaivo’ and ‘Jeb Bush’ to the keywords in posts like these.
We can NEVER FORGET what Terri went through and what a p*ssy Jeb was as Governor of Florida. *SPIT*.
Murder?
that is drivel
Little chance is just an excuse for not trying. Trying to save life is the result of believing life to be sacred.
We just need to keep single-payer out of the US. The Brits love the NHS and even right-wingers like Melanie Phillips are defending it; she blames America for creating a nasty image of the NHS, not the system itself. They all think because they don’t write a check after having a check-up, it’s free. They don’t realize Michael Caine is paying for the entire thing...
The top is essentially uncapped for gain here. Now some firms do seem to push it to obscenely exploitative extents and that becomes a public relations issue for them. But the bright side is a cornucopia of possibility.
What a preposterous headline.....Only the parents and their doctors should comment on this pitiful baby....Murder? Hardly...had he lived, he would have been in a vegetative state, a medical experiment at best.
Jeb went wobbly in the face of boasting wickedness and it is a horrible shame. However he might have genuinely lacked the spiritual support. This was not the time for a rescue but for a warning story. One of thousands that ended up propelling Donald Trump to Washington.
My in-law relatives in the UK are proud of their system and are happy to pay for everybody else’s health care. They consider themselves better and more compassionate than Americans. They CARE about other people! That being said, there is no upward mobility in the UK. You are born into a social level and you stay there for your life. Or you move downward. When I was making peanuts, working as an unregistered tech in the NHS in the UK, my tax bite was 50%. Then again, their welfare system, On The Dole, robs their ‘middle class’ of any possibility of getting ahead. But remember.....THEY CARE. And they are quite proud of themselves because they obviously care about others more than we do.
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