Death Comes Knocking (but has the wrong address)

For Life, Liberty and Property 

By Sean Gabb 21 April, 2024 @ Free Life

At 10:45am on Monday the 20^th August 2023, I was sat at the desk in my teaching room, thinking about what electro-junk to pack for a family holiday in Greece. All of a sudden, I came over queasy.

“I don’t feel very well,” I said to Mrs Gabb.

“How don’t you feel very well?” she asked.

The answer was that I was feeling queasy, and then queasier than ever I could remember.

I am told that I lurched forward and stopped breathing. My own recollection, between looking down at a USB stick and sitting in a different position with an aspirin in my mouth, is of absolutely nothing. There had been no blackness with a continued perception of time. It had been like no kind of sleep. There had been a minute or so of nothing. As I began wondering what had happened, my wife was shouting into the telephone, arguing with the emergency services. I blinked and suggested that I was perfectly fine. I promptly blacked out again. This time, I remained semi-conscious. I was aware I had stopped breathing, and I told myself to start again. My wife tells me I was taking in terrible gasps and looked as if I were dying.

Almost at once, an ambulance arrived, and two women gave me an ECG examination. They said my heart was going at about thirty beats a minute, and that my blood pressure was dangerously low. I asked if there was any evidence of a stroke or heart attack. They said there was none, but that I might die unless they took me straight to hospital. I thought about this. I had suffered no pain in my chest or left arm, nor any confusion or loss of vision. But the assurance of possibly immediate death was alarming. So I went off in their ambulance to the nearest main hospital, where I spent eight hours with my women and a shifting cast of kind and attentive but broadly incompetent persons of diversity. At last, someone who spoke English came into the room to confirm I had suffered neither a stroke nor a heart attack, and that I showed no signs of diabetes or anything else in the blood tests. After this, I announced that we were going home.

No holiday to Greece the next day. Instead, my women lectured me on how everything was somehow my fault, and that I should drink less coffee and sleep more. Over the next week, I visited half a dozen medical specialists. They all confirmed that I was in apparently perfect health. After the last set of tests, they agreed with my own explanation, and told me to be more careful in future.

We did eventually get to Greece, for a very nice fortnight at the end of October. The weather was more like a good English summer than my usual experience of the Mediterranean. There were almost no other tourists. We drove about the Peloponnese on empty roads, and walked for hours through empty museums. We climbed to the top of Mistra with no company but a busload of Chinese students, to whom I gave a lecture on Byzantine history.

But this is a digression. I have mentioned my own explanation of what happened. I suppose I should give this now.

At the end of July, I had asked my dentist to put a crown on one of my crumbling teeth. He did this, and it hurt almost at once. I took the pain as something that would pass in a few days. But we went off almost at once to Slovakia, where the pain continued and grew steadily worse. It was the worst pain I had ever suffered, and words fail to describe how bad it was. It grew so bad that I began to wake up in the middle of the night when the painkillers had worn off. I would then stay awake for an hour, reading Homer until the next dose of aspirin began to take effect. After a week of this, I went to a Slovak dentist, who ignored my clear instructions and pulled out the wrong tooth. After this, I decided the painkillers were a better option than having all my teeth extracted one after the other.

On the journey back to England, the pain grew even worse. I had made an emergency dental appointment for the one day between returning from Slovakia and setting out for Greece. Back home on Sunday evening, though, I decided to give myself some relief from the pain by going to bed with a cocktail of codeine, paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen. The pain went away, but I woke up covered in sweat and feeling sick. I repeated the dose, ignoring all prior evidence that ibuprofen did not agree with me. Sure enough, the dose took effect and I fainted.

I think it was the ibuprofen – though the codeine may have helped. The other day, I woke up with a stiff neck. I took the opportunity presented. I rubbed in a small amount of muscle cream that contained five per cent ibuprofen. Within half an hour, I had turned red all over, and was fighting for breath. Before then, I felt as sick as on the day of the fainting attack. Mrs Gabb was displeased, though it was useful confirmation of my own earlier diagnosis.

So, I can sit here, reassured of better health than many men of advanced years and sedentary habits can boast. But does this explain why I have given up on libertarian activism? Not really. The reason for that is that the possible window for libertarianism that opened in England during the 1970s has closed. If the national collapse we now face is to be avoided, it will need less gentle solutions than I have spent my life recommending. I do not plan to remain silent forever, but think silence a sensible choice until after the next election.

The Conservative Government that came in after the 2010 election was led by men whose only plan was to get into office by lying to their electors, and then strike a deal with the Blairite Establishment. They would let this Establishment continue ruining the country in ways I do not need describe. In return, they would be left alone to grow rich from bribes and insider trading. They and their parasites wanted as easy a life as they could arrange. These arrangements involved a purge of real conservatives and of libertarians, who might otherwise embarrass the new project.

I was not the only victim of this purge. But it was souring to have my novel contracts cancelled and my existing novels remaindered, and almost to lose my teaching position when someone who later became a person of importance in the affairs of this realm – perhaps the same person who had approached my publisher – told the senior management at my place of work that I was a “right wing extremist.” Because I am one of the few people alive who can read and explain classical texts on sight, I have not been put out of work. Even so, the easy circumstances I had reasonably expected from my writings have not returned, and, while my health continues, I must earn my daily bread as a teacher of Greek and Latin.

As often as I look at the news, I burn with outrage. I choose for the moment, though, to say very little. I recent years, I suspect, I have been forgotten. I have no wish to be remembered now by men who never had much scruple when I knew them, and are now part of a network that shows decreasing respect even for the lives of those who get in their way.

The next election, it seems, will be a wipeout for the Conservatives. I cannot see any recovery from the scale of the betrayal they have delivered since 2019. There will then be reckoning with the projectors and agents of this betrayal, and I will join in the denunciations with spotless hands. Until then, I will remain as silent as I can manage.

The Heartbreak and Outrage of Socialized Medical Tyranny

By Rich Kozlovich

I've followed the Indi Gregory story from early on, and I have to ask:  How can anyone look at this picture and not have this story break their heart?  

Yesterday  Bob Unruh published the latest update saying:  Father of baby condemned to die felt 'pull' of hell.

This baby had a serious genetic disorder, so the British judiciary in collusion with the National Health Service decided it was "better for her" if she was taken off life support, and die!  There's one problem with that. This was against the parents wishes, and here's what really upset me.  

Not only was she denied life-saving treatment from the NHS, but she was also cruelly prevented from obtaining it elsewhere. In her final days, Indi and her family became prisoners of the U.K. government.

They arrogantly refused to treat this baby, and they arrogantly refused to allow anyone else to treat this baby.  How dare anyone question their judgement?  What a disgusting display of self righteous, self serving arrogance.  Why isn't that a crime against humanity?  

There were those outside of Britain who were willing to take this poor child in for treatment, but they refused to allow the parents to take their baby out of the country.  Refused to allow anyone to overrule their decision.  The Italian government and the Vatican hospital "offered to transport her and care for her, on the chance that treatment would be successful."  Italy even offered to give the child Italian citizenship.  All refused!  What gave these monsters the right to make such a decision!

The father is quoted as saying: 

"When I was in the court, I felt as if hell pulled at me. I thought that if hell exists, then heaven must exist too.".  The parents while not religious made the decision to have their baby baptized "so that she could be happy in heaven even if she was heartlessly made to die on earth."

So many no longer subscribe to the Judaic/Christian values that created western civilization, in Britain, or in Europe as a whole.  Now the state is playing God!   Whether one is religious or not, this story should outrage you, and it should touch your heart.  I still believe someone is watching. 

Another Great Moment in Government-Run Healthcare

December 3, 2023 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Because of misguided government policies, health care in America is expensive and inefficient.

 

But it’s always possible to have a system that is even worse. I have often cited the United Kingdom, which has genuine socialism (government employs the doctors and runs the hospitals).

However, as part of an ongoing series about “great moments in government-run healthcare,” today we’re going to look north to Canada

Here are some excerpts from a news report about a massive failure by Canada’s system, which may be even worse than the one in the United Kingdom.

Authored by Amy Judd and Kylie Stanton, the article explains how a woman from British Columbia named Allison Ducluzeau traveled to the United States to save her life.

It all started last year at Thanksgiving when Ducluzeau said she started to feel pain in her abdomen. …She started doing tests, an ultrasound, and a CT scan, but she said everything would take weeks to get an appointment. …the results of the CT scan indicated it looked like it might be something called peritoneal carcinomatosis, which is abdominal cancer.” …her doctor referred her to the BC Cancer Agency. …

She said she didn’t even see an oncologist with BC Cancer until two-and-a-half months later but at that point, she had already received treatment somewhere else. …Ducluzeau decided to get treatment with Sardi in Baltimore. …Before she left, Ducluzeau said she called BC Cancer to ask how long it might be to see the oncologist was told it could be weeks, months, or longer, they had no idea. …No word at all from (BC Cancer) until after I flew to Baltimore, had my surgery and got home.”

You may be thinking that there is nothing surprising about this story. Especially if you remember the Hypocrite of the Year from 2010.

But here’s the shocking part.

Ducluzeau said the surgeon told her. “…I suggest you talk to your family, get your affairs in order, talk to them about your wishes, which was indicating, you know, whether you want to have medically assisted dying or not.”

Yes, you read correctly. The government’s helpful suggestion was that she should kill herself.

I guess that would have been a cost savings for taxpayers, but hardly an ideal approach since Canada already has demonstrated a better way of dealing with fiscal policy (though Paul Krugman missed the boat).

For Italy, multilateral globalism, plus socialism, equals death

March 13, 2020 By Monica Showalter

Italy's in dire need of help. Its health care system is collapsing. The coronavirus has put the whole country in quarantine. There are now 15,000 cases, along with 1,018 deaths, the last 24 hours bringing in 188 more. The casualty count is the highest outside China. And it's spreading fast. Until a few days ago, the problem as concentrated in the north. Now, it has spread throughout the whole country. Anyone with a heart can feel pity and an urge to help them. They need help, bad. But don't go asking the European Union. Turns out the open-borders globalist set-up is stiffing the Italians in their hour of need:

First, the EU created the problem by failing to shut down their borders with China, enabling its spread into Italy in the first place. While President Trump was acting swiftly to protect America from the lethal virus, the European Union was saying there was no crisis and calling Trump a xenophobe.

Now, with Italy hit hard based on that hate-Trump 'logic', its medical system is overwhelmed. Its doctors and nurses are exhausted. There's not enough equipment or supplies, and the patients keep coming. Health care is being doled out by triage, old people being told 'no health care for you.' The Italians are appealing for help with masks, surgical equipment, doctors, anything that will enable them to get through it and save human lives -- and the EU is not giving it.

David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner has a must-read column on how the EU is leaving Italy to fend for itself in its hour of need.............And as Freddoso notes, all they are getiting is empty EU words, nothing more. So much for all that 'sharing.'..............Globalism, as it turns out, seems absolutely lethal when combined with socialism. Italy has socialized medicine,...........The central planners don't have enough beds. There's not enough staff. There's no free market to step in and pick up the slack, it's not allowed............Imagine paying for high taxes for socialist health care all your life only to be told in your hour of need 'too bad, you're too old, no health care for you'?............To Read More.....

The Medical Journey of Dr. Mircea, a Doctor Trained under Socialism

By Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh —— Bio and Archives--March 12, 2020

A fresh graduate in September 1961, Aurel described his six years of medical school quite succinctly – four years filled with communist propaganda, basic science classes, political classes, and the Russian language; two years focused mostly on hospital training, public health, and hygiene.  He wrote, “very little practical experience was accumulated during those final years. The final exam consisted of three medical subjects and the mandatory Marxism-Leninism oral test.”

Part 1: The Medical Journey of Dr. Mircea

The Marxism-Leninism test required the memorization of about 50 volumes of communist propaganda. The wise classmate Valeria managed to condense the 50 volumes into 2. It was easier to regurgitate two volumes of the worthless rhetoric that nobody will ever need, including the Useful Idiots.

To pay back the free education, graduates had to accept assignments wherever the communist party sent them. To make sure they complied, the health authorities in Bucharest withheld their medical diplomas until the rural assignment was completed or a replacement was found.

Aurel’s assignment was in two villages in Oltenia which had no electricity, no phones, no running water, no medical supplies, and no medical clinic. One room provided by the local “Feldscher” doubled as occasional examination room and bedroom for the Barefoot Doctor. A feldsher was a term derived from the German word Feldscher coined in the 15th century, given to medieval barbers who practiced ancient medicine in the army.

Patient care was provided on foot, making house calls, rain or shine. After eight months of torture and deprivation of human rights, Aurel resigned, telling the medical commissar in Bucharest to keep his diploma and dropped out of the medical profession temporarily and became a musician.

During his last two years of medical school, students were exposed to some surgery but most of the hands-on medicine was accomplished during the 3-year long mandatory service in rural areas, practicing on desperate people who needed medical care the most..........To Read More....
 

The “Public Option” Is a Slow-Motion Version of Medicare-for-All

January 25, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

Government intervention has made a mess of health care in America. Programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, along with the tax code’s healthcare exclusion, have created a massive third-party-payer problem.

The inevitable result is systemic inefficiency and ever-rising prices.

Some politicians look at these government-created problems and want us to believe that the right solution is to have even more government.

Consider, for example, the radical Medicare-for-All scheme that is supported by “Crazy Bernie” and “Looney Liz.” That’s like driving in the wrong direction at 100 miles per hour.

It’s also a bad idea to head the wrong direction at 50 miles per hour.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Lanhee Chen exposes the reckless nature of the so-called public option that is supported by other candidates.

Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg claim they’re proposing a moderate, less disruptive approach to health-care reform when they advocate a public option—a government policy offered as an alternative to private health insurance—in lieu of Medicare for All. Don’t believe it. …those effects are predicated on two flawed assumptions: first, that the government will negotiate hospital and provider reimbursement rates similar to Medicare’s fee schedules and far below what private insurers pay; second, that the government would charge “actuarially fair premiums,” which cover 100% of provided benefits and administrative costs.

Mr. Chen explains that politicians can’t resist buying votes by offering ever-more goodies at ever-lower costs (I made similar points in a video explaining why Obamacare would be a fiscal boondoggle).

Political pressure upended similar financing assumptions in Medicare Part B only two years after the entitlement’s creation. The Johnson administration in 1968 and then Congress in 1972 had to intervene to shield seniors from premium increases. Objections from health-care providers to low reimbursement rates have regularly led to federal spending increases in Medicare and Medicaid.

And when politicians offer more goodies at lower cost, that means someone else will have to pay.
Either taxpayers today (higher income taxes and payroll taxes) or taxpayers tomorrow (more borrowing).

If premiums can’t rise to cover program costs, or reimbursement rates are raised to ensure access to a reasonable number of providers, who’ll pay? Taxpayers… If Congress’s past behavior is a guide, a public option available to all individuals and employers would add more than $700 billion to the 10-year federal deficit. The annual deficit increase would hit $100 billion within a few years. Some 123 million people—roughly 1 in 3 Americans—would be enrolled in the public option by 2025, broadly displacing existing insurance. These estimates don’t include the costs of additional Affordable Care Act subsidies and eligibility expansions proposed by Messrs. Biden, Buttigieg and Bloomberg. …if tax increases to pay for a politically realistic public option were limited to high-income filers, the top marginal rate would have to rise from the current 37% to 73% in 2049… Congress could enact a new broad-based tax similar to Medicare’s 2.9% Hospital Insurance payroll tax. The new tax would be levied on all wage and salary income and would reach 4.8% in 2049.

Mr. Chen also reminds us that the public option would surely have a very bad effect on private insurance.

Beyond fiscal considerations, the public option would quickly displace employer-based and other private insurance. …Consumers seeking coverage would be left with fewer insurance options and higher premiums. …Longer wait times and narrower provider networks would likely follow for those enrolled in the public option, harming patients’ health and reducing consumer choice.

For those of you who like lots of numbers, I also recommend a new report from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The folks at CRFB are a bit misguided in that they focus too much on deficits and debt when they should be mostly concerned about the size of government.


But they do reliable work and their new report, Primary Care: Estimating Leading Democratic Candidates’ Health Plans, is filled with horrifying data.

We’ll start with this table looking at the details of the plans that have been put forth by Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren. The red numbers are new spending. The black numbers are offsets (mostly tax increases).

As you can see from the above table, Warren and Sanders are definitely in the go-rapidly-in-the-wrong-direction camp.

But that shouldn’t distract us from the fact that Biden and Buttigieg also are proposing a big expansion in the burden of government.

Here’s another graphic from the CRFB report, but I’m focusing solely on the numbers for Biden and Buttigieg so that it’s clear to see that they both want about $2 trillion of new spending over the next decade.

If you look closely at the numbers for Buttigieg in Figure 2, you’ll notice that his health plan supposedly will reduce the deficit by $415 billion over 10 years (the difference between $3.3 trillion of new spending and $2.85 trillion of cost reductions and offsets).

Does that make his plan desirable? Of course not. What he’s really proposing (and this is how CRFB should have presented the data) is $1.65 trillion of net new spending (the difference between his “new spending” and his “cost reductions” ) accompanied by $2.1 trillion of new taxes.

P.S. Most of the “cost reductions” in Buttigieg’s plan are achieved with price controls on prescription drugs. At the risk of understatement, that’s a very costly way of trying to save money.

P.P.S. And if his plan is ever enacted, don’t forget that the actual amount of “new spending” will be much higher than the estimate of “new spending.”

Seven Big Problems with Universal Health Care No One Wants to Address

January 8, 2020 By Larry Alton

Everyone on the political left seems overly eager to adopt a system of universal healthcare. It’s a make-or-break talking point, and for an understandable reason -- healthcare costs in this country, especially when compared with other countries, are exceptionally high. Sick and injured people often choose not to treat their problems simply because they can’t afford to, and nobody wants this to be the case.

However, a universal healthcare system would come with massive problems, likely greater in scale and impact than the system we’re currently dealing with and importantly, nobody on the left seems willing to acknowledge them.

The Big Problems with Universal Healthcare

Let’s dig into some of the big problems that would come with a universal healthcare system:

1. Universal healthcare doesn’t automatically reduce the cost of healthcare………..
2. Americans are notoriously bad at proactive care……….
3. Litigation will remain unabated………..
4. There’s already a doctor shortage, and it’s only going to grow……….
5. Wait times will skyrocket……….
6. We don’t have a model to follow……….
7. Taxes are going to massively increase………. To Read More....

Finland versus the USA

By John Ray, Dissecting Leftism, Thursday, December 19, 2019

The NYT has a large article up under the heading: "Finland Is Our Capitalist Paradise". Finns pay huge taxes but business activity also thrives there they claim

The argument runs that Finns get most big-ticket items "free" for their taxes. The authors are particularly impressed with the free education and free hospitals.  They claim that both are high quality.

And they write as if there is no free education and no free hospitals in the USA. Yet most Americans go to "free" local schools for their primary and secondary education and can go to government hospitals where they will be treated regardless of ability to pay.  So where's the difference?

We have only the word of the authors that there is a difference in quality but I am prepared to concede that many American public schools are ratshit and that American public hospitals can often afford to provide little more than emergency care. So why is that? Can socialized services be better than private ones?

A big part of the American difficulty is that the population of the USA is so diverse.  Many in that population would not even call themselves Americans.  That contrasts with the small and homogeneous population of Finland.  So the American population is orders of magnitude harder to manage than is Finland. So what works well in Finland might work much less well in the USA.

I cannot with any brevity take on all the claims in the NYT article so I just want to focus on one of the claims -- about the high quality of Finnish public hospitals.  Like most Leftist writing, however, they will only tell you the good bits and ignore the bad bits.

I have no new information about Finnish healthcare but I live amid a similar system in Australia.  We too have universal government health coverage. And the limitations of that are well known. Despite the free government healthcare available, 40% of Australians take out private health insurance.  Now why would they do that?

They do it for two reasons: Access and quality. If you have any serious problems, the difficulty is getting yourself in front of the doctor.  There are waiting lists for almost everything and even waiting lists to get on the waiting list!  You could die while waiting and some do.

And the quality of treatment is public hospitals is poorer, if only because it is the private hospitals that have the latest machines.  Even when the public sector has the machines they may not have the staff to operate them.  There is for instance in Brisbane a public hospital hyperbaric chamber to treat divers with the bends but that hospital will simply refer distressed divers to a private hospital that has one.

Similarly, there are apparently PET scan machines for detecting cancer in the public sector but they are very expensive to use so most patients will be referred to one of the private PET clinics, where patients will pay out of their own pockets for the scan. My last PET scan (in a private hospital) was arranged with only a couple of days notice

So I doubt that Finnish hospitals are much better than that. I would be most surprised if Finns get the "no waiting" experience that is common in Australian private hospitals.  And it is for access to such hospitals that Australians buy private health insurance

So that is a relevant comparison. Australians and Americans both are mainly of British and Northern European heritage and both have trouble coping with large "indigestible" minorities.  If you want to know what free universal healthcare would look like in practice in America, look to Australia, not Finland.

The Australian system is not wholly bad.  The immediate and mostly free access to your family doctor ("bulk billing") is certainly hard to beat.  It is the hospitals that are the problem area.

This whole topic is a huge one so I am not going to go on to talk about American versus Finnish university education.  But it is clear that American university education has gone off the rails in recent years and is getting worse rather than better. Finland might well be better. It might need Mr Trump to take an interest in American university education for it to have any hope of improvement.