I have come across a press release from Britain’s National Health Service. The NHS is currently trying to prevent obese people from having hip replacement operations as they do not “deserve” to have such treatment, despite the little matter of their having been taxpayers like the rest of us.
“The NHS, like any proud creation of a socialist, inclusive Britain, has to operate under certain priorities. Indeed its founder, the great Soviet leader Nye Bevan, stated that socialism is about priorities. Well, there is no place and certainly no priority to treat people, who, by laziness, sloth and lack of intelligence, choose to make themselves ill or incapacitated. In fact ill people are a positive nuisance. It is the fit, able-bodied and alert people of Britain who deserve to be treated by the Greatest Health Service Devised by Mankind. No more obese people. No more smokers. No more drinkers. No more red meat eaters and chocolate fans. Such habits have no place in a socialist Britain. Let such vile habits wither away.”
I am still trying to vouch for the authenticity of this release. Looks plausible to me.
That just sounds too good to be true. That IS ultimatly where it all ends up, but I cannot imagine them actually saying that. Socialism is about other people deciding what your priorities are (whenever you hear a socialist talking about the need for more democracy, they are not lying but that is what they means: make EVERYTHING political. No choices can be personal).
If it is approptiatr for treatment to be withheld from patients’ whose lifestyle is not in line with nulab teaching, surely doctors should also stop forcing “animal lovers” to suffer drugs that have been tested on anaimals? The use by protectors of implied threats of physical violence has caused builders in Oxford to go to work masked, to protect themselves and their families.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2005/12/15/nmask15.xml(Link)
Jonathan – I assume it’s a brilliant spoof … written by … you?
Appropriatr = appropriate
anaimals = animals
protectors = protestors
Not Freud, its cold here and I’m wearing (fur) mittens (I must learn to check my work before posting it)
Nice to see that my local NHS trust (East Suffolk) will give me a hip replacement when/if i get fat…
Without any sick people, who needs the NHS?
Without any sick people, who needs the NHS?
Surely you must see the logic. The efficiency of the greatest health system in the world is being constantly diminished by the hords of fat, lazy, irresponsible, bastards presenting themselves for treatment. The way forwards, the socialist way, is simply to refuse them treatment, thus freeing up resources for healthy people or Nulab card holders.
Let’s try to be the devil’s advocate:
NHS is going to ration treatments. It is already doing it. It is also selective – it supplies some treatements but not others.
This cannot be otherwise. NHS cannot give all treatements to all people – is is obviously too much, it cannot be done.
What’s wrong with that ?
You get what you can from the NHS, the rest you buy for yourself if you feel like it and can afford.
(I’m no fan of NHS, but abolishing it is not a realistic aim, much like welfare).
Jacob baldly states that abolishing theNHS is not a realistic aim. I would like to know why not.
It is a communist, Sovietesque construct and should go the same way as the Soviet. Governments should not be in the health business. Business should run the health business, which is how you get the greatest efficiency and the best service at the best prices.
Of course that walking death-knell-of-the-Conservative Party David Cameron would never entertain such an idea. If he decides to do anything about the NHS, it will be to hire more women and gays as transplant surgeons.
Other approaches than shutting down the NHS:
– turn it into a single national charity
– turn it into many charities by basically making each hospital independent
– split it up along council lines and hand over control to the local councils (and local voters), who could decide to do anything from raising local tax, through vouchers, to making their local piece a charitable fondation and ceasing to fund it with tax.
That is the solution to funding problems of government health care systems every where. Only people who don’t need health care are eligible to receive it.
Julian Morrison – Don’t do any of those things. You are only encouraging the electorate to be dependent on the state. Privatise it. Make health insurance compulsory – not through the government, but through private insurance companies. This would apply to everyone, including third generation immigrants who are unemployed and don’t speak English. If they want an Urdu translator, this could be covered in their insurance premiums. People who are grossly overweight, or who smoke, would obviously have to pay more.
Just as everyone accepts that if you are a man under 25 and drive a red car, your car insurance will cost you more than if you are a 40-year old woman driving a blue car, people whose lifestyles indicate they will be heavy users of medical facilities should pay higher premiums. It is a communist construct that all should pay the same.
There is always room for charity hospitals for the truly indigent. The mosques, example, could use some bungs from the king of Saudi Arabia.
“Make health insurance compulsory” – I absolutely disagree. Even car insurance is only compulsory for 3rd party (harm to others). The state has no business at all forcing people to provide for their own health. Especially since there is honest controversy about whether insurance is the best model for private health provision! For example, see here.
Julian Morrison – I take your point, but alas, huge tranches of people will not take out medical insurance if they are not compelled to do so by law. This means the inevitable. The government would set up medical facilities for people “too poor” (code for too stupid) to buy medical insurance, and it would be funded by the taxpayer, against his will and the existence of these facilities would encourage others not to take out insurance … socialism is just too ingrained in the British. They look to the government for solutions to things they should be attending to themselves.
If you didn’t make insurance compulsory, Julian Morrison, the toboggan would race down the same old slippery slope.
As James Bartholomew pointed out in his book, The State We’re In, there was actually pretty comprehensive health cover before the Attlee Govt. socialised the system. Many GPs provided health treatment to the poor for free. Health insurance was spreading, both via direct business and through trade unions, friendly societies and the like.
In a free market, fat people or heavy smokers would have to pay higher insurance premiums, which seems only fair.
If health care is issued “free” at the point of use, then it is understanderble that such Soviet rationing is going to spread. This was predicted when the NHS was set up and folk like Hayek warned that doctors would be increasingly required to make God-like decisions about their clients.
Here is a health plan adopted in Chile more than 20 years ago:
The government forces you to dedicate 10% of your pre-tax income to health insurance.
There are many private health providing companies, competing for the customers. Each person can select for himself the insurer (or service provider) that gets his 10%.
The insurers are monitored by government. They must provide a minimum package of services as defined by the gov. but can offer additional services, and compete on the quality of service.
Each person can, of course, buy suplementary coverage.
I think it works pretty well. It isn’t purely libertarian but addresses the problem of those who neglect to insure themselves, and then fall as a burden on society.
Oh bugger, I meant “The Welfare State We’re In.”
Neato! We can reduce the number of ‘customers’ for the NHS to treat, thus reducing the amount spent on treatment! These funds can then be put towards further layers of management.
You didn’t think that the tax burden would be reduced, did you?
Jacob – but what about “the poor” – who, by the Beeb and El-Ghardayen’s definition, are people who can’t even afford a DVD player? In other words, people living comfortable lives, running cars, going on foreign holidays are officially classified, by the socialist government, as “poor” and therefore deserving of free medical treatment at the expense of the taxpayer. To tell these people to provide for their own medical care before taking a “break” (from what?) on the Costa del Sol would be regarded as discriminatory.
Out of interest, Julie Burchill in the Times writes about this particular subject:
Fatties denied treatment, withhold your taxes now – Julie Burchill.
Read it here: (Link) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,21132-1891081,00.html
I noted this statement above,
“People who are grossly overweight, or who smoke, would obviously have to pay more.” (referring to a private insurance based system).
Hang on a minute, if you happen to be a fat, drunken, slob who smokes, let’s estimate how much extra you might pay under our current “free” system. Lets say, 4 pints +20 fags per day =£6/day tax.
Lets assume you are lucky and make it to 60 years old. Then my maths suggests you might pay as near as damn it an extra:
£100,000
And don’t forget on top of this you would still have to pay what a thin, sober, health freak would be paying who could well linger on into their 90’s at £500/week in a council care home.
It should be apparent that your typical smoker/drinker gets a rough deal from our “free” system don’t you think? This of course is only the half of it, because the afore mentioned smoker/drinker (who lets not forget pays for it all) is now being told, “Sorry, we don’t want to treat you anymore.”
Give me an efficiently run private insurance system any day.
John East, I agree with you, of course.
The NHS has to be broken up. Even supposedly socialist Sweden has a greater degree of private finance than exists here.
Thanks for pointing that out, John East…. I think information like that tends to get lost in discussions of “free” healthcare.
Yes, thanks, John East. When I said fat drunks would obviously have to pay more, I was referring, of course, to a private insurance scheme. They are already very ill done-by by the government.
The existence of the NHS gives the government licence to interfere in people’s private lives under the guise of safeguarding the public purse.
If they’re going to penalise fat people and people who drink more than X number of “units”, then I think, more urgently, they should penalise people who marry first cousins. This is a Pakistani habit, and if there isn’t one available in the country, they import one from their tribal area. Marriages of first cousins, themselves the product of consanguinous marriages for generations, account for huge numbers of birth defects. Pakistani births total around 3% of births in the UK, but 30% of genetic defects.
This is something they bring on themselves, just like overeating and over drinking. They should either have to pay for their own treatment or left to hang out to dry, like fat people.
Amazing to read that the Scots have now surpassed all other countries as the world’s most obese nation – must be all those chips and deep-fried Mars Bars. I bet nobody in Glasgow NHS would have the nerve to tell some overweight Govan resident that he or she can’t get treatment, not unless they need 6 months off work.
Without wishing to imply that I support the NHS (I don’t), I find the degree of trust placed in insurance companies by some previous commentators quite disturbing.
In my experience, there is little to choose between the ethics of insurance companies and those of the average mugger.
For a similar reason, I wholly oppose any move to force people to contribute to private pensions.
I would no more trust the insurance companies I have dealt with (quite a few of them down the years) with my health or my financial welfare than I would a politician.
GCooper,
A hobsons choice I know, does one trust the politicians or the market?
At least the market can be regulated. The politicians are beyond redemption.
I personally don’t approve of insurance. In essence it’s the same mistaken idea as NHS, collective payment and individual freebies. Lack of coercion doesn’t save it. The market incentive is for payers to pick low premiums, providers to give shoddy service, and patients to try and overindulge. The moment you need them, you and the insurance company become enemies. Surely the most perverse of incentives!
People used to save for a rainy day, and pay the doctor in cash. This being back when medicine was much more expensive relative to normal incomes. The incentives on that are so much simpler and better. The patient, to use as little medical help as necessary. The doctor, to provide good service. Quite a contrast!
Julian,
Your criticisms of insurance would probably evaporate if a court awarded damages of £500,000 against you to a passenger in your car suffering serious injuries.
For this reason, insurance seems to me to be the lesser evil.
I certainly agree with GCooper that the insurance companies are rogues, but if you dismantle the NHS, which surely we agree must be done, how would people pay for very expensive procedures without insurance? Yes, you can make them pay for doctors’ visits and for medications. But what about hip replacements? What about cardiac surgery? The only way most people could pay for these is with insurance for Major Medical.
The premiums would be very high, of course. The alternative, which I would do myself in a trice, is to fly to India for surgery. It costs around 1/4 to 1/3 what it costs in the US or to go privately in Britain, and the private hospitals are second to none. In fact, the treatment is so good that the NHS is considering flying patients to India to be treated to save money. Also, in the US, Blue Cross and Blue Shield pay out on procedures done in the two major private hospital chains. It is also possible that someone without any insurance at all could afford treatment in India.
John East: it may be a necessary evil for huge payouts. It’s an unnecessary evil for normal use. Even for huge payouts, there are alternatives such as the old fashioned mutual society (cooperative insurance amongst friends, who at least can be expected to sympathize).
Verity: I think one major impact of private purchase would be to drive medical costs down through globalized competition.
One more bit of competition that would certainly help: allow any doctors to set up their own medical associations to accredit and monitor doctors in competition to BMA. Rationing the supply keeps wages inflated at the expense of patients (and of new doctors, whose vocations are cruelly denied by bureaucratic fiat).
Arrrggg. Then it is little better than the NHS. The only way to ‘regulate’ it is via a true open free market.
GCooper
Your drastic criticism of insurance companies is greatly exagerated.
Insurance is part of everyday normal life. They provide useful and indispensable service in many fields of activity.
There is competition out there among insurers for clients. People and businessmen buy insurance freely, because they need it and get the services for their money.
To claim that all insurance is fraud, and no good, and never works, is just not true.
Jacob writes – People and businessmen buy insurance freely,
Businessmen aren’t people? I don’t think I’ve seen it stated so baldly before.
Although an insurance-based schema is arguably better than a socialised system, it does tend to lead to:
Ridiculously overinflated Doctor’s salaries and drug costs: because the patient has no incentive to seek value for money, Doctors have no incentive to lower their prices. Americans regularly buy drugs from Canada where they are sold at a vastly reduced price simply because the state healthcare system engages in collective bargaining (or rather, monopoly bargaining) and refuses to pay the higher prices paid by American insurers. Drug companies realise that $10/unit profit may be worse than $100/unit profit but it’s still better than $0/unit profit and cut the prices accordingly. Sometimes if you tell a Doctor in the USA that you have no insurance, he can fit you in and ‘somehow’ he tends to charge about 1/4th of what he’d charge an insurance company (because to him, some profit is better than no profit) but other Doctors (the majority) just won’t see you at all.
Non-risk-based-assessments: Car insurance is mostly bought by individuals who are assessed individually and an appropriate premium is set. Over two-thirds of medical insurance is sold as company-wide policies and therefore you basically have a system equivalent to the NHS, where the healthy (majority) subsidise the poor minority – but if you choose to buy insurance singly, your premium is much greater than the premium you’d pay as an individual in a company scheme because there’s no risk spread. This reduces the ability/incentives of/for people to start small businesses, which is pretty obviously a bad thing.
Herd immunity: As in the immunisation debate, having 5% of the population uninsured/unimmunised is a small matter. 25% of the population uninsured is a severe matter – and people will always choose not to pay insurance because they’re young, healthy, or just poorly paid. Their family simply will not let them just die when they get ill, so if they suffer a severe illness that’ll take two people out of work (them and whomever’s caring for them), plus if they have an untreated communicable disease they are likely to pass it on, and if they’re poor they’re likely to live in an area with other poor people etcetera – this eventually leads to epedemics which eviscerate the ‘slums.’
I would be happy with an insurance/voluntary/pay-up-front system as long as:
1. Prescriptions are abolished. I’ve been to a fair few third-world countries (and lived in one for a year and a half,) and if you have a good thick medical book and/or an internet connection and the ability to buy most drugs over the counter, you’re pretty much sorted for 95% of illnesses. I currently have an ulcer that I get NHS antibiotics for. If I were to buy those antibiotics OTC, I’d pay about £15 more in total, but I’d have saved the ‘cost’ of a Doctor’s appointment (£75-£100.) I knew I had the damn ulcer before I went, so I basically had to march in and go ‘got an ulcer, here’s the proof, gimme these antibiotics as shown on the BMJ website’ and the doc went ‘yes, okay.’ Why is this guy on £60k again? The past 5 illnesses I’ve had I’ve always walked in there with my research and he’s gone ‘yes, okay, you’re right, we’ll give you X.’
2. Strong collective bargaining for drugs. Allow drug companies 10% profit, and refuse (somehow) to pay more. If they don’t want that profit they can sell elsewhere. They’ll moan but they’ll take the money eventually. Everyone says ‘drug companies need the money for R&D’ but _after_ factoring in R&D costs, phamaceutical profits are up at 30-50%. No other sector yields anything more than 15%, and they’re just chemists, and that’s _with_ the ultrashort patent life of their products and strict government regulation (FDA approvals, the UK equivalent.)
This is the whole business of medical treatment becoming so sophisticated that no one can afford it. I don’t begrudge talented surgeons their fees any more than I begrudge talented barristers their fees, but what to do? Who can afford them, as we need a doctor more frequently than we need a barrister.
There’s no requirement for a prescription in Mexico, but drugs are very expensive because they’re all manufactured overseas. You can get analogues, though.
What is the answer? Medical gets more sophisticated and more expensive. Through your contributions to the NHS, you are paying for people who make no contribution – as in the birth defects arising from Pakistani marriages between first cousins – to get very expensive treatment for genetic defects in their children. This is wrong.
There has to be a way – and not the middle way of David Cameron’s Middle Way Mark II – to resolve this issue of responsibility. But the NHS is out of the question.
Jacob writes:
“Your drastic criticism of insurance companies is greatly exagerated.”
No, I’m sorry, it is not. I have had a lot of experience of insurance companies: as I said earlier, that experience has been miserable, at best. This has been repeated with friends, relatives, business contacts and others.
Almost without exception, insurance companies try to welsh on the deal, the moment there is a claim. Indeed, I understand that in the case of at least one major US insurer, the automatic response to an industrial claim is to launch a law suit (this, I should add, comes from inside the company in question).
There may be exceptions, I grant you, but that is what they are.
Additionally, as others have suggested, there are manifest flaws in the whole health insurance model.
I’m not pretending I have a better idea (personally, I buy medical treatment privately, from my own pocket – but I admit I am unusual), but I do know that blanket state-imposed patronage of insurance companies for health cover is a rotten idea.
John East writes:
“A hobsons choice I know, does one trust the politicians or the market?
At least the market can be regulated. The politicians are beyond redemption.”
But Mr. East – that regulation is by the self-same politicians you say (and I agree) are beyond redemption!
A National Health Service is repulsive for all the frequently rehearsed reasons here. Governments should not be in charge of people’s health. This is a horrible, horrible idea.
So where is the better idea? I agree that insurance companies’ agreements are designed so they can welsh on the deal. The only way they can’t welsh is when they are dealing with corporations – via employee health insurance – which are as powerful as they are.
Here is how I am reading this subject: People should pay for their own doctor visits and prescribed medication (the pharmacists’ lobby is never going to let you walk in and ask for your own, so I’d be willing to concede this for the moment while we develop the argument). They should probably even pay for the first couple of visits with a specialist prescribed by a GP. Even the very poor, meaning those without a Gameboy in their taxpayer-provided council flat, would have to shoulder the cost or form mutual societies. Ha! Can you see that today – all responsibility having been leached out of the client-of-the-daddy-state underclasses?
After that, private or go to India (also private). Or don’t get treated and trust to luck – which often is not a bad option.
“Sex-change” – in quotes – operations, breast enlargement and other operations to make people “feel better about themselves” must be self-funded. No medical treatment in prisons other than what a jab or ointment can cure. Anything else, the relatives pony up or adios. The prisoner has already betrayed his contract with society, which becomes null and void. One party having opted out, there is no longer a contract.
God, you’d have to take a machete to this entitlement thicket that has grown up around societies in the West! The tendrils even now are reaching for your throat.
Having had first hand experience of health insurance in the US I would tend to agree with GCooper’s sentiments BUT I think the problem is that the insurance companies are not operating in a truly free market. Health insurance in the US is as effectively socialised as it is in the UK with the difference being that the social unit is smaller, usually at the level of a corporation. If you work for a small company with a small health scheme and one member gets an expensive illness you can count on your premiums going up substantially the next year.
It always amazes me that health insurers take you on as a risk without examining your general state of health and fitness. I’m not sure exactly what factors the law allows them to take into consideration (it seems like it is probably past conditions) but it does not seem to permit insurers to take into account obvious some obvious health risks like being overweight or HIV positive.
Insurance companies are free to charge more for motor insurance for a 20 year old man with a fast red car but not free to do the same for somebody with a reckless attitude to his or her health.
Well then, Robert Alderson, perhaps you have identified one of the problems. Except, how can group schemes work otherwise?
“Health care for all” isn’t workable. And also defining “health care” is an ever-expanding socialist agenda.
What’s “health”? Not wanting to live through a bad cold without a free visit to the doctor, who can do nothing more about a cold than your grandmother told you to do? Not wanting to live life as a man when you are “convinced” you were born to be a girl? Having a child with “attention deficit disorder” which for tens of thousands of years has meant a clip round the ear from a parent and now requires expensive drugs? Having suffered a trauma and needing “counselling” from a socialist?
Sorry for two posts in a row, but here you have it. (Link)
Smokers have contributed to their own medical condition, so despite the “insurance” that has been extracted from them for all their working lives, and despite the extortionate taxes they have paid on every packet of cigarettes they ever bought, they are not entitled to health care under Nye Bevin’s “National Health Service” (the “envy of the world”).
Verity, I don’t agree with your prison idea of no treatment. Can you seriously countenance torturing someone to death by septic wounds, because they failed to pay a parking ticket and then tripped and gashed their leg? The very idea’s uncivilized.
Also, in another post you say: “Health care for all” isn’t workable. I don’t agree, because I can imagine someone back in the 19th century saying “food for all isn’t workable”. The free market in food led to Tescos, and now nobody starves for lack of a loaf of bread and a can of beans (excluding those who have already drunk the money). I see no reason why a free market in medicine wouldn’t lead to a comparable situation where nobody needs to worry about routine treatment.
Julian Morrison – Can you seriously countenance torturing someone to death by septic wounds, because they failed to pay a parking ticket and then tripped and gashed their leg? Hmmmm, “failed to pay a parking ticket”. Passive tense.
Inside prison, why did they trip and gash their leg? I imagine these events would be incredibly rare inside prison these days. Do people go to prison for “failing” to pay parking tickets? If so, would that not be their own fault, and not mine? I owe them medical treatment for them having committed an offence and then failed to rectify it?
Why would I owe a prisoner, who has reneged on a person’s natural contract with society, anything?
Plus, I already said above that simple treatment – i.e., not “sex change” operations or breast augmentation to enhance the prisoner’s self-esteem – like antibiotic shots should probably be available without charge, although frankly, I’m rethinking this. Why shouldn’t they pay for their own shots?
Examples of good things you can do for your health are not smoking, drinking water not soda, walking rather than driving, not dropping acid every weekend. These are all personal choices; the inevitable consequence of a national health service is state involvement in these personal choices.
I’m not sure exactly what would hapen if there were a truly free market in health care and health insurance. The US market has thrown up interesting concepts like HMO (Health Management Organisations) which never seem to live up to their potential. We might start to have health insurers bugging their customers to lose weight or workout – I think I could live with that if I was free to go elsewhere or not bother with insurance.
I am quite confident that a free market would provide. State intervention in UK health care came at a point when most people were able to afford decent healthcare thereby making the condition of those entirely without more glaring and resulting in a change to a situation where everybody was forced to have the same sub-decent level of care. One could argue that this mirrors the state’s involvement in education in the late 19th century.
I think the dilemma could be most easily solved by recognizing that prison itself, as a stay at the taxpayer’s expense, is un-libertarian. It’s unsurprising it throws off other un-libertarian corollaries!
Personally I also see prison as inhumane. It’s the only punishment that tortures people over an extended time, as versus being immediate, short, sharp and done with. I suspect that punishment in a libertarian society would tend to fall into the categories of restitution, damages, corporal punishment, and capital punishment. Not prison, because who would pay? So, that solves the problem from my perspective.
Robert Alderson – I could accept chivvying from a private health care insurance outfit to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop eating deep fried Mars bars, stop running across the freeway on a dare and so on. Because it would be a commercial concern for the ensurer. My change of habits, or non-change of habits would impact on profit. This, I like.
Abjuring these things to “free up” health care for others would not be on my agenda. The idea of “sharing” anything with people I don’t even know gives me the creeps.
I sympathise with GCooper’s disdain for insurance companies, since I have come across examples of firms trying to welsh on deals. That said, I don’t see how many individuals can provide for potentially v. expensive health treatment without pooling the risk of such treatment in some way: ie, insuring it.
Part of the problem is the monopoly exerted by the medical profession (which is just as bad in many other parts of the world). State restrictions on prescription drugs also considerably inflate the cost of medical care.
Interesting article on the USA health insurance system here: http://techcentralstation.com/092804C.html
Julian Morrison, the country with probably the lowest crime rate in the world (I’m too lazy to look it up) is Singapore, which has both corporal and capital punishment. People don’t really understand what the rotan (as in being sentenced to 10 strokes of the rotan) is. It is a long, thick bamboo stalk – I think about six feet long. It is not like a cane, for example. The diameter may be more than an inch. They are heavy and very flexible. And the fellows who wield them are very strong.
Strokes of the rotan are agonizingly painful (no painkillers given afterwards) and can cause so much damage that these days, they place padding over the kidneys. No one can sustain 10 strokes all at the same time. So they are returned to their cell in agony in the knowledge that the minute their wounds heal, they’re going back for more.
I don’t have any figures, but I’m guessing that once having been punished with the rotan, people straighten up really fast.
Drug dealers and murders, few and far between as they are, are executed at dawn on Fridays.
You can walk down the street alone at four in the morning in Singapore without any trepidation whatsoever.
I think prison is inhumane, but I don’t care. The way not to be subjected to it is don’t murder, don’t rape, don’t steal.
If obesity and smoking are going to preclude people from treatment wahat about other lifestyle induced diseases,aids,sexually transmitted diseases,dangerous sports and drug abuse?
Oh, but Ron Brick, “we’re not doing enough” for AIDS victims. Actually treatment of sexually transmitted diseases is very popular in the NHS. Special clinics. But an overweight person, fat because of self-indulgence, just as the person with VD got her/his disease from self-indulgence, is at fault and will be denied the service he has paid for all these years. Sexual licence contributes to unravelling the fabric of society, so furthers the socialist agenda, whereas fat people tend just to get comfy and reach for another slice of pizza (which they had delivered to the door).
There is no such thing as society and I suggest you keep your neocon bullshit to yourself. It is not a failure of our ‘society’ that teenage girls get pregnant (because they don’t fear being stoned to death) and that people get STDs through promiscuity (because they don’t fear being stoned to death.) It is the individual failures of those individuals themselves and (in part) whomever is responsble for them, if they are underage. For as long as we have a NHS, they will be treated alongside everyone else without prejudice.
And, following up further to your comments about Singapore (which is one of the most singularly vile places I’ve ever had the misfortune to visit, Manila kicks it comprehensively into touch, and that’s really saying something)
Great. So you approve of the death penalty for attempting to overcome trade barriers and statist ‘it’s not your body it’s ours and we’ll tell you what you can put in it’ legislation?
To see Singapore being held up as anything other than the most dystopian of futures on a ‘rational individualist’ BBS… well, I’m lost for words. Singapore ‘works’ like Communism and Red China works – when there are no individuals, there is no dissent and there are no problems.
Lascaille – How on earth did being stoned to death get onto this topic?
Society is what holds us all together. Little girls of 12 getting pregnant signals a breakdown, especially as the boys who got them pregnant are absolutely never charged with rape of a minor in this free for all.
Buut Lascaille,getting pregnant is a lifestyle choice so is contracting a sexually transmitted disease,interestingly the obese are less sexually acrive thus less likely fall into this situation,oddly they are treated with prejudice.
Verity, you mentioned ‘sexual licence’ with respect to STDs therefore I figured you were talking about promiscuity and decreased sexual taboos.
Yes, 12 year old girls becoming pregnant is a serious issue – but it very rarely happens. The fact that it’s headline news for 3 days when it does happen gives you some indication of how rare it is.
This is a problem, but then again so would the mass murder of 12 year old girls, or indeed any crime committed against largely-defenceless children.
People being less uppity about sex is not. Perhaps I read it wrong, but your post reeked of neocon ‘the nuclear family must be preserved as it is the one true path to a stable society’ ideology – and ideology is the best word for it, as it is nonproven, nonobvious and biologically ‘inappropriate.’
Ron, yes, but the NHS have never stated that they would deny treatment due to lifestyle choices – the original press release (which was hugely misreported) said:
‘Treatment would not be given if it would be ineffective in the particular case due to environmental factors which may include the patient’s lifestyle.’
i.e. if you’re a 500lb landwhale, we’re not gonna stick a replacement hip in you when the replacment hip is only rated by the manufacturer for use in patients up to 300lbs.
Furthermore, it is the duty of the Doctor (even if you’re paying him!) to state ‘we cannot perform this operation on you because the equipment will fail to function’ and refuse to proceed. Any surgeon who proceeded would be engaging in malpractice.
Go read what the damn release actually says.
Lascaille says to Ron Brick: “Go read what the damn release actually says.”
I would like to offer Lascaille the same advice.
He writes: “Perhaps I read it wrong, but your post reeked of neocon ‘the nuclear family must be preserved as it is the one true path to a stable society’ ideology – and ideology is the best word for it, as it is nonproven, nonobvious and biologically ‘inappropriate.'” Perhaps you read it wrong? It was a miracle of the imposition of what are clearly obsessions of yours onto my plain, easy-to-understand post. You also threw in chopping off heads and the mass murder of 12-year old girls. I have no idea where those topics came from. Certainly not from the original post nor the 55 or so comments on it.
I suggest you stick to the topic and stop trying to weave your person obsessions into other people’s posts.
Verity, I felt no need to stick to the topic because I was commenting on _your_ post, not the original comment.
I also hardly feel that a post that contains the statement
can be reasonably described as ‘free from personal obsession’ and I do very much continue to think that ‘neocon bullshit’ accurately describes that quote. If you think my obsession is neoconservatism, I’ll happily downgrade that quote to ‘plain old bullshit.’
Furthermore, I only referred to the murder of 12 year olds to counter the (grossly untopical, if we’re playing that card) statement _you_ made about pregnant 12 year olds – which has nothing to do with the original referent of ‘sexual licence’ and has everything to do with criminality.
I also replied accurately and topically to Ron’s post which directly references the original comment, and you quoted it so you must have read it, but you failed to reference any part of it apart from my throwaway line.
When I address your posts, I try to address them in whole, not in part. I assume, as you made no comment, that you found nothing to criticise in my summing up of the NHS release that’s linked in the original comment?
Lascaille, your reading of other people’s posts is unique, I have to say. Your “throwaway line” was the only thing in your post that made any sense.
The rest of it was a rant about your personal obsessions, not a response to anything I wrote. Just what you chose to perceive I really meant in my sekret koded message. Throw in sudden, not to say startling, references to chopping off heads and mass murder of 12-year-old schoolgirls and you come across as not being very tightly tethered.
Lascaille, Think again, concerning your comments:
”your post reeked of neocon ‘the nuclear family must be preserved as it is the one true path to a stable society’ ideology – and ideology is the best word for it, as it is nonproven, nonobvious and biologically ‘inappropriate.’”
The inaccuracies here would do justice to the most limp wristed, right on, sociolologist. I am not necessarily anti alternative lifestyles, but to claim that the concept of the nuclear family is not the best for a stable society because
1.It’s non-proven. Balderdash, just look back at history.
2.It’s non-obvious. It’s obvious to me that ma, pa, and kids is a pretty stable combination. Your reasoning here escapes me.
3.It’s biologically inappropriate. This is the biggest howler. Total crap in fact. If you knew anything about genetics and evolution you would be aware of the fact that the young of Homo Sapiens need protection for 10-15 years before they are able to survive in the wild. The fact that life expectancy in the wild was only around 30 years ensured that adult pairings would generally be life time affairs. Those parents possessing genes which enhanced these skills, would pass such genes on to their offspring, this is how behaviour evolves. It didn’t happen in the Social Sciences Department of the University of Flintstone.
Go and read some Anthropology, Genetics, Biology, and History books, then come back here and talk some sense.
Your snide use of the word, “ideology” should apply to your views, and most certainly not to the instinctive, intuitive, and obvious nuclear family concept which will be around until our genes, not social engineers, tell us to stop living this way.