Health Care in Hell
When I was a prison doctor, my patients — the prisoners — would often try moral blackmail. If I did not give them what they wanted, they said, they would kill someone, and then it would be on my conscience.
I never gave in to the blackmail, and eventually the prisoners abandoned the attempt. But I always had a niggling fear that they might carry out their threat. The fact that they were responsible for their own actions was never sufficient to allay it entirely.
North Korea is the international blackmailer par excellence. An article in The Lancet for July 31 titled “North Korea’s health system in disarray” is subtitled “Food shortages, international sanctions, and a lack of funding have pushed North Korea’s health system past breaking point.” A little later we read that “fears are increasing that North Korea is on the verge of another famine as a result of cuts in international aid …”
It seems, then, that those principally responsible for the situation in which 45 per cent of children are stunted because of malnutrition and 9 million people lack enough food are foreigners. This is, in effect, to accept the viewpoint of the blackmailer. Though the article cannot be said to be positively sympathetic to the regime, there is not a single word in it about what the regime might have done to bring this catastrophic situation about. There is nothing about its economic and agricultural policies, which have been shown the world over to bring about permanent shortage and acute famine wherever and whenever they are tried, to say nothing of its total concentration on military might and the production of nuclear weapons. It is perfectly obvious that if the North Korean regime were really worried about famine and the health of its population, all it would have to do is dismantle itself.
For all those who wanted healthcare “reform” and pine for a single-payer system, take heed.
Take heed, indeed. The path has no bottom.
Look at this picture of the Korean Peninsula at night:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm
Wonder how they are running their critical medical infrastructure each night…like, say respirators?
Don’t think that could happen here? Keep spending trillions of dollars of money we don’t have.
Coming soon to America, thanks to Obamacare.
Glad to see Theodore Dalrymple here at Pajamas Media. With Andrew Klavan and Victor Davis Hanson, and some others, favourites as grounding for the lightening strikes pie in the sky “news” from Washington Post, NY Times, ditto Los Angelos, and of course National Public Radio and TV, And that lion of the left-wing jungle since the 1960s, the venerable, “oh so trustworthy” BBC.
I am a conservative but I just don’t see what good is going to come of this bill. Why should I have to pay for some guy who never worked a day in his life to have health care? I work hard, I work hard to be able to have health care. It’s not my responsibility to pay for some one else’s mistakes.
I would think it very easy to cut down the number of deaths during surgery simply by not doing any more surgery. Likewise I could easily cut down on infant mortality by having fewer children. Probably see these techniques in the not too far off future if Obuma care is allowed to continue.
Just wait until they lower speed limits to 10 mph on every road and highway to reduce accidents and fatalities….
In recent years, The Lancet has become notorious for its lefty, irrational, socialistic stance. I wouldn’t now regard any editorial in that magazine worth taking any notice of.
This is so depressing, because:
“It is perfectly obvious that if the North Korean regime were really worried about famine and the health of its population, all it would have to do is dismantle itself.”………….
or….another way of putting it:
It is perfectly obvious that if the Barack Hussein obama regime were really worried about the economy and the health of its population, all it would have to do is dismantle itself.
Like I said, this is so depressing. Reality used to have some fun in it here and there. Not so much any more. For the first time in my adult life, I’m becoming afraid of my country. And obama’s braindead base think he’s doing just fine.
A great point. You can easily see that emotional blackmail is a primary foreign affairs strategy for all of the standard-of-living destroyng, self-serving totalitarian and socialist regimes around the world. This is aided and abetted by the equally self serving elitocrats at the United Nations. In fact you can also see such blackmail as a primary strategy of Progressive here at home as they try to hold the productive people in our society responsible for burgeoning government and for the under class that has been created and doomed to non-productiveness by their policies. Would that we could just ignore them here at home as we should abroad.
The unsustainable joke will be on us because when our birth-rate is already too low to keep the balls juggling in the air for all of the Lefty pyramid schemes and those who are born become more parasites to add to the freebie-roster rather than productive members of society…well…
STUPID
Dr Dalrymple has just described the very Nature of Socialist Democracy.
And that lesson would be, that when amputating the leg of a person a minimum of 5 other persons are required to hold the patient down. We’re all about jobs, jobs , jobs! Seriously though, the Lancet’s job is to bring a tear to the world’s eye. It’s for the children, you know. Never broach the reason “the children” are in such dire straits. Didn’t they do the same thing for Gaza last month? See what I mean?
Delia: And the unsustainable grand-daddy of all pyramid schemes, Social Security, is close to finding out the suckers aren’t being born every minute any more (only every minute and half) so you’re right- the juggled balls will come tumbling down. The only question is when.
I would prefer to opt out of SS, take all the money I’ve already paid in, plus keep paying in the SS money what I’m paying now – put it into an account with my name on it (and I really don’t care if it even earns interest in the interim) then let me have it when I turn 65, and I won’t ask SS for anything when I turn 65. Plus, if I happen to die before age 65, my kids get what I’ve paid in until then. Would SS take this deal? Not on your or my life.
This brings to mind my favorite George Will quote, from the spring of 1993. Asked his opinion of the difficulties experienced in the ramp-up of Clinton Administration, Mr. Will Replied:
“I disagree the the administration is in disarray; this is what liberal government looks like.”
Similarly, the North Korean health care system is not in disarray. Everything is going exactly as to the plan. It’s just a crummy plan.
This is normal in North Korea. It’s the Old Normal for that country. Currently there are efforts underway to define a New Normal in the USA, in everything from health care to employment to bailouts of favored groups, using the same crummy plan.
@11. RockThisTown,
We were never supposed to live long enough to cash in on the Social Security Scam… Now people are living longer (OH NOES) and wanting their moula that they were FORCED to pay into.
People didn’t have an OPT-OUT and that is SICKENING.
I agree, it would be GREAT to have a personal SS account where YOU had control of it (at the very frickin’ least). HA! Double HA! evennnnnn.
CROOKS.
Thieves.
SCUM.
Awww. Leftist Ideology 101
Delia, I wouldn’t even care if I didn’t have control of it, (they can do with it what they please in the interim), just so long as I got it all back when I turn 65, AND I could pass it all on to my kids if I died previous to that.
The crooks & thieves will never allow an SS opt-out, we will never have control of it, and we will never be able to pass unused benefits on to our children. It’s the grandest of Ponzi schemes, but all legal and proper b/c it’s given the Congressional crooks & thieves’ seal of approval.
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