Tag: rationing

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general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-​19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-​hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-​19 infection — too bad. A public-​private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-​19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-​saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Fatherland, Socialism and Death!

Venezuela, store, socialism, column

The fall of Venezuela is an atrocity.

The comic elements are clear enough — the further you remove yourself from the poverty, chaos, and collapse. We can wallow in a bit of Schadenfreude, taking glee as some American leftists squirm to explain why the socialist paradise they ballyhooed a mere three years ago now tail-​spins to the grave.

The collapse of this socialist experiment offers an enormous level of tragedy. It’s not pretty.

The country’s leader, President Nicolas Maduro, makes his predictable desperation play. Rather than confront his own errors, and the futility of making socialism work in anything like a rigorous form, he boasts. “Venezuela Leader Says US ‘Dreams’ Of Dividing Loyal Military,” reads yesterday’s Reuters report. While no doubt true, this is one of those cases where whatever we dream to the north, our dreams are better than their current reality.

Of course the Venezuelan military should turn on Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s inheritor, protecting the right of recall, which Maduro is denying. By painting the U. S. as the bad guy, Maduro hopes to unite his people — especially his armed forces — around him. That’s what a desperate demagogic dynast does. Citizens and subjects traditionally abandon skepticism about their leaders when they feel threatened from the outside.

Which is one reason it would be a mistake for the U. S. to intervene.

Reuters poetically reports that the military is still united behind the socialist government, and resists the recall referendum, singing “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death!”

Wrong conjunction. Not “or” but “and” … if you insist on socialism.

The government, military pressure or no, should allow the recall vote, and soon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Venezuela, store, socialism, column

 

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national politics & policies too much government

No Waiting for the Lies

From the beginning, Democrats urged us to reserve judgment about their beloved “Affordable Care Act.” Wait, they said, until enacted … “to find out what’s in it.”

Then they said: wait till we see how it works.

Now, they tell us to wait some more, while they figure out how to bring some competence to the “glitch”-ridden healthcare​.gov.

Waiting was the thing some folks feared most. The closer the country got to socialized medicine, the more queues, lines, and waiting lists would get set up, as bureaucrats scrambled to prevent disastrous cost overruns. Hobbled with regulations and mandates and increased demand (without properly paying for said demand — such is the way of politicians’ promises), it was never unreasonable to expect that “death by waiting” would eventually become the integral feature (not a bug!) of the new system.

Still, in one thing, there was no wait. Though the president may have been lied to right up until healthcare​.gov’s launch — misled about the testing and integrity of the IT system — there was at least one lie known from the beginning as a lie: that we could all keep our current insurance policies.

Considering the extent of Obamacare’s regulations, that was impossible. Only a small set of choices would be available to Americans. Most legacy policies just wouldn’t cut it, short a special waiver from Washington.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting cancellation notices from their insurers. Others, more “lucky,” are being informed that their policies will be upgraded to the nearest Obamacare-​acceptable alternative, at raised rates.

This is the Honest Truth about Obamacare: Obama lied; his staff lied; Congress lied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Canadian Treatment

While President Obama flew to foreign lands to lobby for Chicago’s Olympic bid, a group of Americans trekked to Canada to find out about government-​run health care.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute in Colorado, visited Vancouver, British Columbia, to host a conference that explored Canada’s medical system. Caldara’s foray north was written about in the Washington Times, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed some of the same Canadians.

Caldara’s interest in the subject is personal as well as civic-​minded. He has a 5‑year-​old son who has undergone eight operations, including heart surgery. From what Caldara can tell, his son would have received little or none of this treatment in Canada. There, instead, he would have been put on waiting lists.

Caldara heard stories from Canadians who had been shuffled from one specialist to another, each requiring long waits before even being seen. Actual treatment? More waiting.

Outside the system, entrepreneurs have sprung up to broker deals with private physicians to the south, in the U.S., and even with growing quasi-​illegal clinics in Canada.

Meanwhile, in our little haven for sick Canadians, American politicians still talk about reforms that would ruin it for the Canadians — as well as for us. Some even prefer the Canadian system to what we have now.

Jon Caldara doesn’t think this makes sense. Neither do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.