Investor's Business Daily vs. NHS and Stephen Hawking

[Sisyphus]

Recently, an unintentionally hilarious editorial in Investor's Business Daily about the supposed "death panels" of "socialized medicine" included the following quote:

 

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

 

The sentence has since been removed, though not before setting off a snark bomb in the liberal blogosphere. TalkingPointsMemo decided to ask Hawking himself about it, who responded by email with a decline to interview but saying,

 

I wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high quality treatment without which I would not have survived.

 

I bring this up not merely to make fun IBD or the Palinesque fearmongering about "death panels" (although obviously I'm not above that), but as a jumping off point for discussion using this high-profile and illustrative case.

 

The point here is not that the NHS is wonderful in all things. Stephen Hawking is a wealthy man who, I assume, has also been well taken care of by Cambridge University. I very much doubt every British ALS sufferer has received the care he has. But that's exactly the point. There's nothing stopping him from getting additional care from other sources, which he has taken advantage of. Even if there was a "death panel" deciding they couldn't afford to take care of him (and there obviously wasn't), that isn't a "death sentence," any more or less than not having any such system in America is a death sentence for everyone who gets sick. Nobody is forcing you to rely on it. And despite taking advantage of this using his own resources, he has also taken advantage of and apparently been satisfied with what the NHS has been able to do for him. So at least in this case, he doesn't see it as just a drag on the rich to take care of the poor. Win win? Or is Hawking's perspective distorted?

[swansont]

I don't know if this is an aside or follows directly, but one should note that these "death panels" already exist. They are comprised of the managers at whatever insurance company sold you your policy.

[Pangloss]

I agree with both of the above.

 

Maybe we should just stop calling them "death panels". It feels like we're feeding some nameless, faceless trolls somewhere. There are legitimate concerns about cost-reflective oversight in any health care system, but they shouldn't be trumped up for ideological gain.

 

Thanks for passing that along (the Hawking story).

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Though it's completely off-subject (sorry), I thought it worth mentioning that Hawking received the presidential medal of freedom today from President Obama.

[John Cuthber]

Can I just check on something here?

 

Prof. Hawking (who is known to be very clever) thinks the NHS is a good thing.

Someone, who is unwise enough to fail to check on a simple matter of fact, thinks the NHS is a bad idea.

 

Anyway, I'm glad to hear about the award of the medal.

[iNow]

Yes, John. That's the basic level of debate we've been seeing here in the US. Total morons stating total bullshit which is totally irrelevant. Someone seriously said that Hawking would be dead if he lived in the UK, and thought this argument supported their position that single payer systems are bad.

 

Somebody... Please... Just shoot me now.

 

The worst part is that nobody is going to care that Hawking flatly refuted the comment, and (as you said) mentioned it was a good thing. That won't impact people. They're wearing impenetrable condoms over their head where logic and reason cannot get in. It's the same with people who say evolution isn't true, or that humans can't possibly cause global warming. The parallels in mindset are overwhelming.

[John Cuthber]

"Somebody... Please... Just shoot me now."

Can I shoot them instead please?

[iNow]

Well, I suppose that might turn out better for me, so yeah... be my guest.

[Pangloss]

The system Hawking supports is not currently under debate in the US, so most of the current debate furor is not actually aimed at an NHS-type system. There are poorly-based arguments against single-payer systems, though, and it's accurate to say that. I also agree with iNow that some of the lunacy underlying objections to what HAS been proposed ("Obamacare"/HR3200) is also pretty ridiculous.

 

Other objections are well-founded and significant, to both Obamacare and to single-payer health care systems.

[iNow]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/opinion/17krugman.html

Besides being vile and stupid, however, the editorial was beside the point. Investor’s Business Daily would like you to believe that Obamacare would turn America into Britain — or, rather, a dystopian fantasy version of Britain. The screamers on talk radio and Fox News would have you believe that the plan is to turn America into the Soviet Union. But the truth is that the plans on the table would, roughly speaking, turn America into Switzerland — which may be occupied by lederhosen-wearing holey-cheese eaters, but wasn’t a socialist hellhole the last time I looked.

 

Let’s talk about health care around the advanced world.

 

<...>

 

Finally, the third route to universal coverage relies on private insurance companies, using a combination of regulation and subsidies to ensure that everyone is covered. Switzerland offers the clearest example: everyone is required to buy insurance, insurers can’t discriminate based on medical history or pre-existing conditions, and lower-income citizens get government help in paying for their policies.

 

In this country, the Massachusetts health reform more or less follows the Swiss model; costs are running higher than expected, but the reform has greatly reduced the number of uninsured. And the most common form of health insurance in America, employment-based coverage, actually has some “Swiss” aspects: to avoid making benefits taxable, employers have to follow rules that effectively rule out discrimination based on medical history and subsidize care for lower-wage workers.

 

So where does Obamacare fit into all this? Basically, it’s a plan to Swissify America, using regulation and subsidies to ensure universal coverage. <

read the full column

>

 

 

A short an interesting column.

 

 

 

At this point, all that stands in the way of universal health care in America are the greed of the medical-industrial complex, the lies of the right-wing propaganda machine, and the gullibility of voters who believe those lies.