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libertangoI'm not kidding, below. They really do make the claim Hawking couldn't survive under NHS. {hat tip to Talking Points Memo}
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Sirs:
I will mention only in passing your Gross Factual Error about how physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K.," since he's been a U.K. citizen since his birth there 67 years ago and thus has lived his life under their National Health Service ("How House Bill Runs Over Grandma," unsigned editorial, Friday, July 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT). My guess is you've received voluminous feedback about your journalistic carelessness.
No, I'm here to write about your disingenuous tone regarding how you are shocked, shocked! that anyone would apply a cost-benefit analysis to health care. Are you really of the opinion such analyses are not done today by U.S. health insurance companies? Are you either so naive or protected to think individual Americans who have no insurance don't do the same? Have you heard from no doctors who grieve over patients who have been refused care either from their insurance companies or their checkbooks?
Must you complain of the mote in health care reformers' eyes, while you studiously ignore the beam in your own?
Sincerely,
etc.
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UPDATED TO ADD:
Howard Dean, MD, on yesterday's "THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS" on ABC:
I don't want somebody in between the doctor and the patient. I don't want the possibility of losing your health insurance. I don't want people setting standards or denying care. That's all what we have now under the private health insurance system. That's what happens.
Look, I've practiced -- I've practiced for 10 years. My wife is still practicing. Never once did I have a Medicare bureaucrat tell me what I could or couldn't do for a patient, but all the time we have bureaucrats from the insurance companies calling up and saying, we're not going to cover this, and we're not going to pay for that, and we're denying coverage of that.
The system we have right now is broken. We need to fix it.
I think giving the American people some choices about how to fix it makes sense.
--
Imagine. A doctor with actual experience of private-sector bureaucrats rationing care. Who'd'a thunk?
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Sirs:
I will mention only in passing your Gross Factual Error about how physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K.," since he's been a U.K. citizen since his birth there 67 years ago and thus has lived his life under their National Health Service ("How House Bill Runs Over Grandma," unsigned editorial, Friday, July 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT). My guess is you've received voluminous feedback about your journalistic carelessness.
No, I'm here to write about your disingenuous tone regarding how you are shocked, shocked! that anyone would apply a cost-benefit analysis to health care. Are you really of the opinion such analyses are not done today by U.S. health insurance companies? Are you either so naive or protected to think individual Americans who have no insurance don't do the same? Have you heard from no doctors who grieve over patients who have been refused care either from their insurance companies or their checkbooks?
Must you complain of the mote in health care reformers' eyes, while you studiously ignore the beam in your own?
Sincerely,
etc.
*^*^*
UPDATED TO ADD:
Howard Dean, MD, on yesterday's "THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS" on ABC:
I don't want somebody in between the doctor and the patient. I don't want the possibility of losing your health insurance. I don't want people setting standards or denying care. That's all what we have now under the private health insurance system. That's what happens.
Look, I've practiced -- I've practiced for 10 years. My wife is still practicing. Never once did I have a Medicare bureaucrat tell me what I could or couldn't do for a patient, but all the time we have bureaucrats from the insurance companies calling up and saying, we're not going to cover this, and we're not going to pay for that, and we're denying coverage of that.
The system we have right now is broken. We need to fix it.
I think giving the American people some choices about how to fix it makes sense.
--
Imagine. A doctor with actual experience of private-sector bureaucrats rationing care. Who'd'a thunk?
