Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren.

Read more on HHS Mandate Fits Bigger Pattern…

Despite a promise of “complete and fair coverage of health care for everyone for free,” the Greek state-controlled system is broken and corrupt, the Athens daily ekathimerini.com reports. Predictably, Greeks have taken it upon themselves to build a private health care sector:

Read more on Free Universal Health Care is Expensive, Tricky…

In August, the Wall Street Journal Europe published an article exploring the difference in health care received by domesticated animals and humans. (see “Man Vs. Mutt: Who Gets the Better Treatment?” in WSJ Europe, August 8, 2009) The editorialist, Theodore Dalrymple (pen name for outspoken British physician and NHS critic, Dr. Anthony Daniels) argued that dogs and other human pets in his country receive much better routine and critical healthcare than humans: their treatment is “much more pleasant than British humans have to endure.”

Dalrymple outlines just why this is so: pets in the U.K. actually have it better than their owners since: a) they receive immediate treatment with no waitlists or postponed operations “(and) not because hamsters come first”; b) there is no fear that somehow they are being denied the proper treatment for economic reasons: there is “no tension, no feeling that one more patient will bring the whole system to collapse…; (no one is) terrified that someone is getting more out of the system than they.”; and c) pets in veterinary facilities have more options and flexibility for choosing a healthcare practitioner: “if you don’t like him, you can pick up your leash and go elsewhere.”

British humans, on the other hand, have to deal with navigating the rapids and swells of NHS bureaucracy, which requires the skills of a “white-water canoeist”. They must also endure interminable wait-times for prostheses and life-improving operations. Often they receive sub-standard administrative services, nursing assistance and meal provisions.

As President Obama continues to promote a Europeanization of the American healthcare model, the WSJ Europe editorialist beckons us to listen to such howling in the twilight of the Old Continent’s rapidly aging nationalized healthcare systems. Part of this howling is caused in the less dignified forms of public health services and treatment of human patients. Yet, there is plenty of loud barking over the mismanagement and abuse within nationalized healthcare across Western Europe, particularly in terms of mishandling budgets and sources of revenue. Read more on The Dog Days of European Socialized Medicine…

If it doesn’t faze you that

1. Uncle Sam badly mishandled the stimulus porkanaza
2. Congress would have directed bazillions to a surreally corrupt Acorn but for these two young heroes
3. Michael Moore’s Sicko is Wacko

Read more on Six Reasons to Reject Obamacare…

ABC is refusing to air a national ad by The League of American Voters, featuring a neurosurgeon asking the question, “How can Obama’s plan cover over 50 million new patients without any new doctors?”

Read more on The Health Care Ad ABC Won’t Run…

History shows us that civil rights can exist as nothing more than legal fiction. Take, for example, the right to vote. Although suffrage was extended to African-Americans under the Constitution in 1870, that right was little more than a nice idea until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. With many activists and politicians calling for America to recognize the “right” to health care, it is well worth looking at what this means. Making promises that cannot be met is a betrayal of the public trust, and the integrity of the government depends on its ability to hold to its word. In many other economically-developed countries, the “right” to health care coverage exists, and nearly everyone is enrolled in some sort of insurance or public plan. Unfortunately, coverage is not the same as health care procedures. Many governments insure nearly everyone, but cannot deliver the health care that those insured people need. These governments leave a broken promise in the place of the right that exists in their laws.

Read more on The Right to Health Care is Wrong…

The Radio Free Acton crew is back in the studio! On today’s broadcast, Dr. Donald P. Condit and Dr. Kevin Schmiesing join our host Marc VanderMaas for a discussion of the ins and outs of the US health care system. Dr. Condit gives us some background on how the current system came into being, the problems associated with it, and the pitfalls of the current healthcare reform proposals in Washington.

Read more on Radio Free Acton is Back / Perspectives on Health Care Reform, Part 1…

[update below] British physician Theodore Dalrymple weighs in on government healthcare and “the right to health care” in a new Wall Street Journal piece. A few choice passages:

Where does the right to health care come from? Did it exist in, say, 250 B.C., or in A.D. 1750? If it did, how was it that our ancestors, who were no less intelligent than we, failed completely to notice it?
…
When the supposed right to health care is widely recognized, as in the United Kingdom, it tends to reduce moral imagination. Whenever I deny the existence of a right to health care to a Briton who asserts it, he replies, “So you think it is all right for people to be left to die in the street?”

Read more on Dalrymple on “the right to healthcare”…

Blue pill or red pill? No, it’s not the iconic scene from The Matrix, where Neo is given the choice of staying in his computerized dream world (blue pill) or leaving the Matrix and discovering reality (red pill). It’s President Obama boiling down the complex issue of health care reform on television last night: “If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”

Washington Examiner columnist David Freddoso had this to say:

Today Dr. Donald Condit looks at a new federal proposal called the Patients’ Choice Act, which promises more freedom in choosing health care insurance. “The PCA will enhance patient and family ability to afford health care insurance and incentivize healthier lifestyles,” Condit writes. “In addition, it would surpass other options in fulfilling our social responsibility to the poor and vulnerable.”

Read more on Acton Commentary: “Patients’ Choice Act — A Better Prescription”…