Just A Reminder: Universal Health Care Is Terrible And Will Probably Murder You In Your Sleep
Okay, maybe that's a bit strong. But in the ObamaCare debate, we were always reminded by liberals how awesome socialized medicine is overseas, so turnabout's fair play, I think. Anyway, the link is to an article from the Daily Telegraph, which found that under Britain's NHS, over 1,100 nursing home residents have died since 2003, not because of their illnesses or old age but because of severe dehydration--despite the homes having adequate numbers of staff and (of course) good ratings from the government review boards, the patients weren't getting enough water. As if that wasn't bad enough, nearly three times as many died over the same period from malnutrition or bed sores. Yikes.
It's been noted before that the Brits remain stubbornly positive about their health care system, partly because it does work under certain circumstances but partly because they just don't want to admit defeat. One wonders how many stories like this they have to hear for that to change. (Just to show Britain's not the one bad apple, here's a story from Canada about how the wait times to see a doctor have become so long, the Great White North's considering re-privatizing some of its health care. Good times, good times.)
Rule Of Thumb: Always Fact-Check A #HATECRIME!!!!!! Story
This seems to be a running theme lately--messages bashing an ethnicity or gender or sexual orientation get reported, community crackdown on anything slightly offensive ensues, everyone gets lectured by higher-ups on the need to be respectful and accepting of others....and then it turns out the victim and the perpetrator are one and the same. Of course. No sooner did New York's Vassar College start a witch hunt, I mean launch a task force to find out who was writing messages like "F--k N-----s" and "Hey Tranny, Know Your Place," then it turned out the transsexual student who filed the hate speech report was the one who wrote them in the first place...and was also a vice-president of student government, and a member of the investigating task force. Ohhhh.
I could go into detail on other stories, like the Boston-area high school which ended its football season early (but not the requisite candlelight vigils) when racist graffiti was scrawled on one of the players' houses, then found out his mom did it to get attention; but I'll let you read through that one on your own.
GOP Hypocrisy? Eh, Not So Much
Among the things liberals (especially those in the media) just LOVE doing, calling out the Republicans for hypocrisy, or at least betraying their constituents' own interests, stands near the top of the list. Take this Time article noting that congressional Republicans have voted to scale back the food stamp program (not that much, mind you), despite the fact that, on average, a GOP lawmaker is likely to have a higher proportion of his constituents on food stamps than is a Democrat. The implication is clear enough: Republicans care more about their ideology than they do about helping real people, and also Democratic voters are usually more successful and probably smarter, too. Except, not only is a sizable chunk of the data on which the article based this claim missing, that which is present shows the results are really all over the map, with red states such as Idaho, Nebraska and even West by God Virginia (!!!) relying on food stamps than, say, "progressive" Oregon. Oops.
Though, even if the evidence had borne out Time's claims, I'm not sure what that would prove. Given that the Left relies on some watered-down quasi-Marxist rhetoric about class conflict to make many of its claims, wouldn't such proof show that rich people are not mean jerks who want to screw over the poor?
Paging Descartes....
And finally, just to reassure you that you really may be smarter than a big chunk of the population, check out this article from the so-called Scientific American which basically says that, because scientists are a bit vague on the boundaries between life and non-life and because you can sorta think of organisms as just really complex machines, "life" doesn't actually exist at all. I briefly toyed with the idea of laying out an objection to this, but you know, on that rare occasion when you find an article so patently dumb you don't have to waste breath refuting it, it's best to take advantage of it. Just go into the weekend with the knowledge that you know more about the world than some "scientists" do.
If you've got other good stories, mention them in the comments, by all means. Otherwise, enjoy.
32 comments:
Actually, the Cameron Government already started allowing some slight privatization with an NHS bill they passed last spring. Basically, if I am understand the new law correctly, the health insurance will cover healthcare from "any qualified provider". That means they are more free to go to private providers —not just public doctors.
The public health service reacted the same way crappy public schools react to the idea of school vouchers.
The hate crime hoaxes bother the hell out of me. It's the whole "Cry wolf" thing, which makes it harder to believe when these things happen for real. (And no, I'm not saying there's a hate crime "epidemic" like some alarmist, but they have been known to happen.)
What are Commentararians thoughts on Bitcoins?
ScottDS - That is the same thing that bothers me about the crime hoaxes too. There was another very public hoax revealed in NY this week. A waitress [former military] posted a copy of a receipt with a nasty note explaining why the customer was not tipping her because they could not support her "obvious" gay lifestyle. Of course it went viral with all of the self-righteous indignation that goes with it and the outpouring of donations to this poor unfortunate waitress. Well, it turned out that SHE was the one who wrote the note. And now she may face fraud charges for taking the donations and perpetrating a scam. Oh, and she was dishonorably discharged from the military too.
I don't understand Bitcoins, but there is someone in the UK (I think) who will be spending a lot of time going through the city dump trying to locate his discarded hard drive that had millions of dollars worth of "Bitcoins" on it. I am guessing that it just the newest version of bartering/currency kinda' like beanie babies.
I think of Bitcoins like I do Carbon Credits and Global Warming,,,,just something made up to bilk people out of money...fraud.
T-Rav
The life is just a machine article is just some Sheldon Cooper wannabee that wants to be a Robot... I say Good Luck with your cruciferous vegetable nights every Thursday then.....
As to the More people in GOP states on welfare meme this is a standard accusation by the left to indicate that Red States are net takers of Government money and that Blue states are run by smarter people who make more and thus are more fiscally better than thou....
There is one slight problem that is overlooked and that is the fact that most Red states have a balanced budget amendment in their constitutions and Blue States do not...
Yes it might be true that we Floridians take more of the government dole per capita but then again we balance out budgets BY LAW. This means we can't do those fiscally sound things that California does like say run up 63 billion in debt. So yes our politicians probably squeeze every dime they can out of the federal spigot... Hey it is not like the feds are not taking it all from our citizens in taxes anyways.
The machine life article is a lightweight take on something serious thinkers have been toying with for decades if not centuries. It's little more than a mental exercise. The serious debate isn't whether life exists, but how do we adequately describe the things that we know to be true? The divide between living and not-living may be narrower than we think, but it doesn't change the obvious.
Individual - And to add to that, many "Red States" have no state income tax so the taxpayers pay more to the Federal gov in income tax because there is no state/local income tax deduction in those states with no state income tax...
Kit, I hadn't seen that. It's more than I would have expected at this point from the Cameron government.
The reaction from the public health sector, on the other hand, is as predictable as night following day.
Bev, I know Andrew touches on that in his book, but I'd like to understand it better. Hopefully one of these days, you or he would devote an article to the subject. (Or if there's one I'm forgetting, link to it here.)
tyranmax
If all one eats for dinner is brussel sprouts every night can one really say one is living
Scott, you're right, there are very real incidences of crimes or harassment on the basis of race or sexuality or whatever, something I suspect I have more personal experience with than many of the people who are always raising the hue and cry.
But in my opinion, the whole concept of "hate crime," whatever basis it has in reality, is a very dangerous one, because it makes any negative interaction between two people of different backgrounds very easy to be exploited and made into a fake example of intolerance. One could almost say that these "cry wolf" stories are a feature of it, not a bug.
Patriot, I have no thoughts on Bitcoins, so hopefully others can help you out.
Bev, I was actually going to link that story about the waitress too, but then forgot about it. But it's maybe an even more egregious example of this whole thing, because it a) pulls all the right heartstrings with the whole military angle, and b) all the major news outlets jumped on it right away as an example of bias and hate, and then of course we learned better. Not that they'll easily admit it, though.
Bev
That's a good point,
John Stossel did a show on Bit Coins. They are a completely private currency that uses sophisticated encryption software to identify the timestamp of an individual file to form a monetary unit that is literally made up of data.
Supposedly there are or will be only so many Bit Coins in existence so there will never be inflation. As to their actual trading value supposedly these are transactions that governments are not able to monitor and therefor cannot control or tax.
T-Rav, I tend to agree with your sentiment about hate crimes. These hoaxes wouldn't work if it weren't for an extreme credulousness and acute sensitivity on the part of those rushing to organize candlelight vigils for the very people that turn out to be perpetrating the problem. It's really quite the opposite of "cry-wolf." To me, this speaks against the usefulness of "awareness" campaigns. I realize that you can't eliminate a problem by ignoring it, but I believe you can exacerbate one by poking at it too much. It also feeds into victim culture, which has generated a perverse identity of victims as heroes. That isn't to say that victims can't become heroes, as many have, but it is not automatic. It is the rush to canonize victims of every perceived slight that encourages people to stage these sorts of hoaxes.
Indi, agreed on all points. The whole comparison of government outlays between red and blue states is just something liberals tell themselves so they can say that they, and not Middle America, are the backbone of the country. Like the article about machine life, it's good for a laugh, if not much else.
tryanmax, usually when articles like this one pop up, there's more to it than meets the eye. Not so much here. The author is tackling the philosophical question by saying that "because it's hard to say where life begins and ends, we should just assume there's no such thing as life." That's one of the poorer exercises in logic I've seen lately.
I follow all of the health stuff in Britain and their system is a mess. Americans would never tolerate that and the Dems better watch their butts because they own all the country's health care problems now.
On hate crimes, this is becoming the "in thing" to invent hate crimes and then scream about it. That's the surest way to discredit something. Nice work, fools.
Patriot, Bit coins are an illusion. They are a ponzi scheme that you go into knowing it's a ponzi scheme. Buy them at your own risk.
Andrew
I got the sense from the Stossel expose on BitCoins that they are primarily being used now by people who want to make monetary exchanges that were off the record i.e. drug sales, transactions in dictatorship countries that are disallowed etc.
I would not technically classify it as a Ponzi scheme. You essentially are buying something. A virtual unit of currency that only exists on the internet. There is no need for anyone to fund current exchanges with future people being fooled to opt in. Everyone receives this thing and there are supposedly only so many of these things that are allowed to be creative.
The risks and they are substantial are twofold:
One: Bit Coins are a fiat currency that are not even backed by a government. They are only worth anything if other people think they are worth something. Essentially you could decide to sell Confederate dollars under the same scheme. If people are willing to accept it is worth something they you are good. If not well at least confederate money might have some collectors value... with bit coins you got nothing.
The second risk which is no less imposing than the first is the risk of corruption. The idea is that bit coins will never inflate relative to themselves because there are only so many bit coins allowed to be in existence. Thus a Bit Coin could fluctuate with the prices of the US dollar but not say with Gold that is more stable. IF you can't print more you can't inflate the currency.
The true risk is that you are trusting whoever has developed this programming code that they are enough of a hot shot programmer to stop all hackers from breaking the encryption algorithms and downloading more or that the programmers themselves are not going to ignore their promise and one day just release more of the bit coins. This risk is greater than the first because one this happens, not backed by government the first risk will automatically become a reality as well.
Essentially you are buying magic invisible money from some guy on the internet.
The author is tackling the philosophical question by saying that "because it's hard to say where life begins and ends, we should just assume there's no such thing as life."
T-Rav - Isn't that kind of the "anti-religious" philosophic viewpoint? Since we can't prove when/where life begins/ends, life must not exist.
Bev, that had crossed my mind, and I'm sure the author would say the same thing does apply to God. Like I said, completely lazy intellectually.
BTW, On the hate crimes thing, there have also been a series of incidents lately with waitresses claiming they were told racist or anti-gay things as reasons for not getting tips, and in each case, it's turned out that the waitress was lying and one even faked the receipt.
Andrew - It is the same for many incidences of nooses hanging too. I think it is purely to get attention.
Hey, Andrew, are you snowed in in Colorado?
Bev, We've got one inch outside. So I think we'll survive. :) But it is 7 degrees, so it is cold.
How did the cookies turn out?
Yeah, it's amazing how many of these supposed hate crimes are just cries for attention or outright fraud. There are some sick people out there who want to feel relevant to the world.
I am making some of your Mom's cookies this weekend. Thanksgiving got kinda' crazy and I didn't have time. I'm going to make the crescent shaped ones first (I can't remember the name). I will let you know how my official "taste testers" at work like them. I warn you though, they WILL eat anything...really! I even have an official Austrian taste tester too!
I hope they work. :) I love those. The Austrians are everywhere!
Hm.
LINK
Erm... a small point, but nursing and care homes in the UK are not part of the NHS: the vast majority are run by the private sector.
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