Thursday, December 08, 2005
On Nationalized Health Care, Offered Without Comment
From The Telegraph:
One of the most decorated British fighter pilots of the Second World War has sold his medals, diaries and other memorabilia partly to pay for a hip replacement operation for his wife who faced at least a six-month wait on the National Health Service.
Sqn Ldr Neville Duke, 83, the Royal Air Force’s top-scoring ace in the Mediterranean theatre who set a world air speed record of 728 mph in 1953, put the collection up for auction rather than subject his wife Gwen to months of pain and discomfort while she waited for an operation.
The standard waiting time for hip replacements in the orthopaedic department at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, one of the nearest facilities to the Dukes’ home, is six months.
Mrs Duke, who has been in pain with her hip for eight months, was told by her chiropractor that the wait might be 15 months.
Update: Linked by The Colossus (who definitely has strong feelings on the subject).
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Yes, but with nationalized health care at least everyone will have health care. Sure, it will be shitty, but at least everyone will have shitty healthcare. Then it will be fair. We’ll all be screwed together. Isn’t that what it’s all about? Wouldn’t Jesus want us to suffer with each other?
So, what you’re saying, is that Jesus has issues with hip replacement surgery?
Or am I reading too much into this?
I’m hoping Patrick is being sarcastic.
I do believe that there’s a strong thread of sarcasm running through this thread. Patrick’s socialist tendencies usually only come out when he wants local governments to take property from poor old people.
Heheheh. Just kidding.
Don’t miss the part about not one, not two, but three burglaries at their home. It’s a good things guns are outlawed in England because then people would be able to protect their property and they’d have all that icky silverware and memorabilia cluttering things up. Far better that bandits and robbers take it off your hands.
Wait… what?
"Far better that bandits and robbers take it off your hands.”
Which is precisely why he had nothing left to sell to pay for his wife’s free medical care.
Or something like that.
(Is it just me, or does Duke sound like a hell of a guy? Totally the model of a WW2 fighter pilot.)
Patrick’s socialist tendencies usually only come out when he wants local governments to take property from poor old people.
Haha. Very funny.
Start a Kelo thread, I dare you! (I’ve to read up on this stuff for my certification exam. I’m ready.)
Like I’m gonna rise to that bait.
Why the hell is a chiropractor advising someone about major surgery?
has anybody considered that in the states, he also would have had to sell everything to get her hip replacement unless he had been purchasing expensive INSURANCE, which is also available, i’m sure, at a price in the U.K. as well.
oh by the way, my mom recently fell and broke her hip in Montreal. She had a hip replacement 5 days later, 4 weeks in a rehab hospital and now is doing much better.
Not bad for socialized medicine, which would be way better if our federal govt hadn’t stopped funding provincial health care in the 90s to eliminate the deficit that at that time right wingers were screaming bloody murder about. Of course, now that bush is in and lowering taxes, nobody cares much about ballooning deficits.