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Big Libertarian Questions

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“This raises some very big libertarian questions,” said Nigel Farage yesterday. 

About what?

The “rights of parents against the state.”

The outspoken Brexit supporter and former leader of the UK Independence Party was referring to Charlie Gard, the sick, dying 11-​month old British baby, whose parents sought to take to the United States for an experimental medical treatment. But the hospital and the British government pooh-​poohed any likelihood of success and said, “No.”

That’s when Charlie’s parents went to court, fighting for seven months for the right to simply try to save their child’s life. Now, after those months of delay, even that remote medical hope has faded away.

“Even today,” explained Farage, “the hospital and the state are saying to these poor parents, ‘Oh, no, no, Charlie can’t die at home. He’ll have to die in our hospital.’”

The judge in the case called it “absurd” to suggest that little Charlie was a “prisoner of the National Health Service.” But not free to leave the country or even the hospital, that’s precisely what this poor child has become.

“There was a case four years ago of a little kid, Ashya King, who had a brain cancer,” Farage noted. “His parents wanted him to go to Prague for a revolutionary new treatment that the doctors here said wouldn’t work. The boy went. It worked. He’s now cancer free.”

Those parents were briefly imprisoned … for saving their child’s life.

It appears that single-payer makes the government the single-decider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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4 replies on “Big Libertarian Questions”

It appears that single-​payer makes the government the single-decider.

And too many Americans want to make single-​payer the law here in the US, as well.
I will never understand how people who are ‘pro-​choice’ in so many aspects of life want the government to be our sole provider of a SERVICE (not a right).   The people who provide this service are working for a living.     They’re not just doctors.   The people in the much-​derided drug and medical device companies are doing research on potential new products to extend life or cure diseases.  They are trained professionals, every bit as much as teachers, engineers, etc.   Once government gets its hands on their business, all innovation will come to a grinding halt.

I spend two weeks a year in Scotland. It seems that the local papers save up all of their single-​payer National Health Service horror stories for the time that I am there. The healthy are happy. Those in real need of quick service travel to the USA for treatment.

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