For all the talk of the evils of the American system of health care, at least we promote freedom of choice, and give as many options to people for their care as they can afford. As the doctor who offered experimental treatment [to Charlie Gard] said, in court, ‘if Charlie had been ill at any institution in the United States, they would have immediately begun the treatment.’ But in the U.K., a socialized medicine country, where individual needs come second to the preservation of the system, there’s less concern with parental rights. In the U.S., we are so interested in the freedom to obtain care that we insist on releasing a legally brain-dead girl to her mother so long as her mother wishes to keep her hooked up to a ventilator. In the U.K., they are insistent on withdrawing the opportunity for life-saving care because it is better to kill the child than keep it alive. While this case became a court proceeding, every single day the National Health Service (the NHS) makes decisions about how to ration care. Bernie Sanders tweets about how nobody should be denied care because they can’t afford it? But that’s what happens all the time under socialized medicine — the difference being, it’s not about you not being able to afford it, it is about the government not being able to afford it.
Ben Shapiro, on The Ben Shapiro Show, June 29, 2017, discussing the case of Charlie Gard, whom the government would not release to his parents to take him to America for an innovative treatment that might have saved his life — for which they had privately raised a small fortune.
