Deciding Who Lives And Dies

Liberals love to control everyone around them. From demanding seatbelts to banning salts and transfats to banning soda in schools, liberals just can’t stop telling you how to live your life. But how far would they really go? Would they deny you medical care if you don’t conform to the way they think you should live? Take a wild guess.

Today’s story comes from Britain, which is often a trendsetter for our left. This story specifically involves a poll conducted by the UK of 1,096 doctors in the National Heath Service. They were asked if the NHS, i.e. the government agency which controls all healthcare in Britain, should have the right to deny non-emergency treatments to smokers and to people who are overweight. Fifty-four percent (54%) answered “YES”.

Think about that for a moment. A slight majority of British doctors (“do no harm” types) felt that the British government should have the right to deny Britons medical care if they were smokers or fat. And don’t forget, in Britain, there really is no other choice for medical care, so this is effectively a ban, not simply a demand that they fund it themselves.

The ostensible reason for this is a shift in attitudes resulting from the need for medical cut backs. In other words, because money is scarce, they want to decide who they consider worthy of receiving treatment and ban everyone else from getting it. But when is money ever not scarce?

And don’t think this is theoretical either. A prior investigation has already found that 25 of 91 Primary Care Trusts in England (think “Obama Insurance Exchange”) have imposed treatment bans since April 2011 in an attempt to save ₤20 billion by 2015. Indeed, in parts of England, smokers and obese people are being rejected for hip and knee replacements so these trusts can allocate their resources to people whose lifestyles they deem more justified of receiving treatment. And you can bet that once it’s acceptable to deny “non-emergency” care to undesirables, emergency care will be next. . . like in euthanasia countries, where doctors now decide if your life is worth saving or if the state wouldn’t be better off letting you shuffle your now-worthless ass off this mortal coil.

So once again, liberals are dividing the world into those they like and those they don’t and they are trying to use the power of government to punish those they don’t. The NHS is a system from which Britons cannot escape. . . just like a single payer plan would be here. They make you pay massive taxes for that system your entire life, i.e. they turn you into a slave, with the promise that you will be taken care of. Then they deny medical care to those they dislike. So much for medical care being a basic human right.

This is the problem with liberal “do-gooder-ism.” It quickly becomes fascism of the worst kind. From banning things you eat to taking your children if you teach them the wrong lessons to imprisoning you for having the wrong thoughts to letting you die if they don’t like you. Don’t ever believe a liberal when they start whining about human rights or dignity because they don’t really mean it. . . they always omit the critical words they are really thinking: “for some.”