When Fate Can't Wait to Kick You in the Butt

Hey libs, methinks YOU might to rethink Obamacare after this story. Courtesy of I Hate the Media: Former British health director dies after operation cancelled four times.

Oh, did I mention that the operation was cancelled at her own hospital? From the Daily Mail:

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital.


Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

He said: 'I don't really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off.'

Sadly, I can't feel very bad for her husband. All I can think about are the people who died after this woman cancelled their operations or decided that their medicine was too expensive and that they weren't worth it.

And yet, despite things like this, Democrats insist that socialized medicine will drive down costs and make healthcare more affordable for everyone. Yeah right.

So, do the British recognize the irony in this story? More importantly, does the Ministry of Truth American Media recognize the irony of this?

Oh wait, they didn't report it. Nevermind.

What About Canadacare?

A hat tip to commenter's at Gateway Pundit for directing me to this article by Let Freedom Ring. Muchas Gracias, people! Read the whole article, it's a good read. Here are a few selections from it:

I’ve long thought that Canadacare was vastly overrated. Thanks to Drudge highlighting this article, I now have proof galore that Canadacare is a disaster. Here’s what I’m referring to:

SASKATOON — The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country’s health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.

Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country, who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting, recognize that changes must be made.

“We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize,” Doig said in an interview with The Canadian Press. “We know that there must be change,” she said. “We’re all running flat out, we’re all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands.”

The pitch for change at the conference is to start with a presentation from Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA, who has said there’s a critical need to make Canada’s health-care system patient-centred.

Health care systems that aren’t “patient-centred” are worthless. If the patient’s needs aren’t the health care system’s highest priority, then that system’s priorities are worthless. PERIOD.

So much for that old complaint that Canadians have better healthcare then Americans, eh? Wait, it gets better.

Who cares if everyone is insured if there are 17 week waiting periods for primary care physicians and longer waits for specialists? Who cares if everyone is insured if Canada has one-third of the MRI machines per capita that the United States has?

The question that conservatives should’ve been asking John Q. Public is whether they were willing to trade breakthroughs in equipment and life-saving procedures so that everyone is insured. We’ve failed in that type of messaging. Starting immediately, I won’t make that same messaging mistake again.

It must’ve about killed them to write this:

His thoughts on the issue are already clear. Ouellet has been saying since his return that “a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it’s possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and “that competition should be welcomed, not feared.” In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system.

It must’ve been painful for someone who’s worked in a single-payer system to admit that “competition should be welcomed, not feared.” It must’ve been eye-opening and painful. While Obama and the Democrats have tried extolling the virtues of single-payer, albeit in code, Canada is moving in our direction. (Isn’t irony wonderful?)

Yes. Yes it is. Like I said, so much for that old fable that Canadians get better healthcare. If you wanna wait for 17 weeks before you can see a doctor, that's fine by me, but I don't want to, so don't you dare try and force everyone else onto the same plan.

Oh yeah, too late, Obama's already trying. Well, I'll leave it up to the rest of you to decide how long you want to wait for a doctor.

News Blurbs

Just a few quick news blurbs.

Blurb #1 - Government Health Care Socialized Medicine Strikes Again

Woman Told To Buy Painkillers Dies

A woman died from a heart attack hours after being sent home from hospital complaining of chest pains.

Debra Beavers, 39, was told to buy ibuprofen for the pain when she visited the Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife, last Sunday, according to the Daily Record newspaper.

Ms Beavers' family believe she may still be alive if the hospital had not been so "dismissive." Her sister Darlene McConnell said Debra had twice contacted NHS 24 last weekend after initially suffering numbness, swelling and leg pains - then after chest pains.

An appointment was made at the hospital.

But Ms McConnell told the Record: "I spoke to her on Sunday morning and she said the pains were so bad she thought she was going to die.

"She went to the hospital as arranged at 1pm and was back out in minutes. The doctor told her to go home and take ibuprofen. ... She went to a relative's house nearby and lay on the settee in complete agony until she had a seizure around 8pm."

Read the rest here.

Blurb #2 - Religion of Peace Perpetual Outrage Strikes Again

Eight Christians Burned to Death after Koran is Supposedly 'Defiled'

Paramilitary troops patrolled the streets of a town in eastern Pakistan yesterday after Muslim radicals burnt to death eight members of a Christian family, raising fears of violence spreading to other areas.

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled.

The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. “They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses,” Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. “We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action,” Mr Masih said.

Police and local officials said that at least eight people, including four women and a child, were killed in the fires. Two others died of gunshot wounds. Residents said that the casualties were much higher; one claimed that the number of dead could be in the dozens as many bodies were still buried under the rubble.Shahbaz Bhatti, the Minister for Minorities, said that 40 Christian homes were torched in rioting. He said there was no truth to allegations that a Koran had been defiled, and accused the police of ignoring his appeal to provide protection to Christians.

Tension started mounting last week after Muslims accused three Christian youths of burning a copy of the Koran. They denied the allegations, but clerics called for their death. ... Christians ... face intimidation because of discriminatory blasphemy laws, including one that carries the death penalty for defiling the Koran and images of the Prophet Muhammad. The law is often misused to settle personal scores.

Yep, it's sure hard to miss that PEACE. Read the whole thing here.

-Thanks for Reading-

Critics Beware!!

Michelle Malkin and Gateway Pundit report that the White House is asking snitches to hand in information about people like me, who don't support a government health plan socialized medicine.

From Gateway Pundit:

Today, Barack Obama initiated the first stage of his Marxist snitch network.The White House asked supporters to report anyone who publicly opposes President Obama’s plan to implement a government-centric overhaul of the health care system.

And from the White House website itself:

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

Except the truth is scary. I don't know about you, but I don't relish the thought of have life-saving medicine denied me, or being told I have to wait for surgery - sometimes because there aren't enough beds. How would you like it if this happened to you and your family because Barack Obama decided to force us all on a government plan?

Oops, there I go again. Anyway, back to the White House:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

How about Obama's Healthcare plan? That's pretty fishy.

Red State adds:

...[A]s we’ve seen in the health care debate to date, the term “disinformation” is used by the Obama White House as a catchall to describe any opposition to the President’s push for single-payer, government-run health care — meaning the White House wants to be informed of any forwarded emails or blog posts or any “casual conversations” that could be taken as opposition to their health care overhaul plan.

The White House has, as yet, offered no explanation of what it is they plan to do with the tips on policy opposition they hope to receive from citizen informers.

Really? That's odd. I'd like to see what they'd do, especially with the Constitution itself blocking them.

I wonder why Obama wants people who tell the truth reported to him ... could it be that the Internet lets the truth out? And, why does it even matter to Obama? It sure didn't matter back in the Bush-bashing days. Obama and his cronies do not have the right to restrain bloggers who tell the truth since, as I said earlier, it goes against the very first amendment of the Constitution.

You've probably seen it before, and if you haven't, I've had it on this blog for nearly as long as I've had DR4I. It goes like this:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Of course, Obama has no trouble getting rid of or ignoring these sorts of things whenever it becomes to inconvenient for him.

You see, I have the right that, since I don't like Obama's Health care plan, I can speak out against it. Now what Obama's trying to do here I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to fathom.

The real question is, do you want to know the truth about this government health care plan, or not? I've offered a bit of the truth, just a sampling of what's happened in other countries that have a government health care plan. I strongly encourage you to go look through this archive , which is full of the truth from other countries that have government run health care. These are the things the media will never show you.

Yahoo Finance reports:

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

That whole article is worth reading. Socialized medicine, A.K.A. "Government health care reform" has never worked, and never will work. The only way it would work was if everyone had the exact same problems. But they don't. This health care bill will hurt more people than it helps. The government can't run a program like this. No government can.

So now Obama wants to know who's out there telling the truth about his health care plan. I wonder how that's gonna play out.

One Final Point:

Hooray for Healthcare! or, The Name of The Game is Socialized Medicine

It's a shame that 47 million Americans don't have healthcare. But that's okay. With Obama's arrival in office, I think we can look forward to that changing. With National Healthcare, we'll all be taken care of.

Assuming, of course, that those Republicans don't raise a stink. Stupid Republicans. How dare they interfere with Obama's socialism!!

(By the way, those two paragraphs up there consist of sarcasm.)

Welcome to the Conservative Corner. My first subject is socialized medicine. Looking for info, I went out and did a blog search. Here's one blog:

... What follows in this article are 7 of the many reasons I am voting for Obama and not John McCain....

But I'm only looking at number 6:

Health care. While I do not believe that Obama’s health care plan is the universal plan that our country really needs, it is a good step towards a better plan and it will help to lower overall health care costs. McCain’s approach would hurt more than help. There would be even more people without health care with McCain as President.

Socialized medicine is never a good step to better plan. Ever.

Here's another blog:

With the election of Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States of America on Tuesday, America showed that it is ready for ‘change.’ As Sarah Palin headed for snowy climates and John McCain returned to the Arizona desert, some Americans are realizing that they do not know exactly what change is in store for them in terms of health care. Nursing student Taylor Sohrwide discussed her views on Obama’s health care plan. Sohrwide, 22, is in her second year of nursing school. Although optimistic, she admitted that she was not certain what health care changes will be made. She has a general idea. “I think it might sound good to some people who don’t have health insurance, but in the long run, it’s going to be bad for our country.”

It's a shame this didn't dawn on people until after they elected him. Over here, on another site known as "That's Debatable" the author writes:

Let me play devil's advocate for just a minute with regards to medical research. I am a big fan of capitalism. However, pharmacological research is one area where I think capitalism is failing. Take antibiotic development for example. We are seeing more and more organisms develop resistance to many of the antibiotics we rely on daily. The solution, of course, is to stay ahead of the curve by developing new antibiotics to replace the older ones. As much money as "Big Pharma" charges for medicine, this shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong.... pharmaceutical companies are in business to make money, with the secondary aim of stamping our disease (capitalism at its best).

The author goes on to explain that antibiotics are only bought occasionally, so pharmaceutical companies spent less time working on those, and more time working on medicines that have to be taken daily. Pretty scary stuff. But what I want to know is, how is socialized medicine going to fix that? Does Socialization inspire anyone to fix anything?

Well, let's see what Obama has to say about all of this. Back on Obama's site , he claims he will make healthcare affordable for all. According to his site:

...that’s why they’ve proposed a plan that strengthens employer coverage, makes insurance companies accountable and ensures patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.
The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors and plans to implement the plan. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.
Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.

He also says he will

Establish a National Health Insurance Exchange with a range of private insurance options as well as a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.

That site was quite vague, actually. (How very Obama-ish.) He's got all sorts of ideas to fix the mess, all of which are vague. Myself personally, I wanna know what that National Health Insurance Exchange is. I decided to Google it. I managed to find an explanation:

A regulated market of private health plans which would compete with a proposed public health plan for consumers who cannot obtain health insurance through their employers or current public programs such as Medicaid or SCHIP.

Regulated market, eh? According to Wikipedia, a regulated market is:

the provision of goods or services that is regulated by a government appointed body.

Interesting. I wonder what they mean by "government appointed body." Also, how is Obama going to pay for this vague plan of his? Well, he explains that little bit of knowledge on his website:

Barack Obama will pay for his $50 - $65 billion health care reform effort by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year and retaining the estate tax at its 2009 level.

Ouch. Now, let's go over to Ontheissuses.org. Let's see what Obama really says about his healthcare program. About halfway down the page, I found this most interesting quote from Obama:

I've got a plan for creating universal health care, shepherding that through Congress so that I can actually sign a bill, then executing and implementing that. You know, those are things that I worry about.

He's got a plan for creating a universal healthcare bill. That's bad, people, that's very bad.

Over on Angelfire.com, I found some pertinent information. Alot of pertinent information. According to the author, there are six results of Socialized medicine:

1) When healthcare is free, people have no incentive to save money. [And it's your money they're spending.]

2) Doctors have no incentive to give good care, Pharmaceutical companies have no incentive to develop new medicines.

3) You will end up paying for my healthcare, and vice versa.

4) The quality of the healthcare will deteriorate. [Ain't that the truth.]

5) You'll have no privacy. [Not when everyone else has to pay for your problems.]

6) You'll have no freedom.

And you know what? I believe all of it. Go to the site, and read the article. Then keep scrolling down. There, you can read about:

- How a woman was forced to pull out her own teeth after no dentist would treat her.

- How patients with lung diseases were "condemed to death" after thier medicine was taken away.

- How some hospitals have banned the obese and smokers from the hospital. (And were allowed to do so)

It's not funny, people. It's not good - for anyone- and despite all the complaints I here on the net where people are complaining about America's so-called "terrible healthcare" at least in this country you don't have to wait thirteen weeks for an MRI if you have cancer.

And this is what Obama wants to do. He wants to install socialized medicine. I'm sure he's convinced he can do better than Britain, Cuba, Canada, or the other countries.However, I'm equally convinced he can't do it.

If so many other countries have tried and failed, what makes him think he can do better?

No, it's not racism. It doesn't matter what color his skin is or isn't, all that matters is if he'll do the best he can for our country. Socialized medicine would not be a good thing for our country.

Begun 11-11-08

Completed 11-13-08