Another Reason Socialized Medicine is a Bad Idea

Power Line's John Hinderaker has this post Friday on the UK's medical system (emphasis mine):

In the United Kingdom, Parliament will take up a proposal to give National Health Service patients the right to seek private health care if they have been kept waiting for an appointment with a specialist for more than four months. Cancer patients, in particular, have evidently been removing themselves from the queue the hard way.

But the problem isn't only with specialized forms of treatment. The London Times quotes Jennifer Dixon of the Nuffield Trust:

"It would not only give patients enforceable health care entitlements but it would also prevent managers and clinicians from controlling waiting times as a way of limiting demand and saving money," she said. "In the past requirements to make financial savings often resulted in hospitals stopping routine surgery for a couple of months before the end of the financial year."

What a system! It beggars belief that Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress want to reproduce the fiasco of socialized medicine here in the U.S.

Yes, John, it beggars belief. But Barack Obama and Demcratic leaders in Congress really do want to reproduce this fiasco. More power and control for them. Less for the rest of us.

But what are the chances that hospitals will stop offering routine surgery for the nation's elites? Will Nancy Pelosi be told to wait until the new fiscal year before she can get the hip replacement she might need after her bill takes effect? Will John Kerry have to wait for another Botox shot? Or will that only apply to us riff-raff? Just asking...

I heard from someone who has started reading Pelosi's 1,990-page medical-takeover bill that it includes such pressing health care issues as requiring nutrition labeling on the front of all vending machines. After that, no doubt they'll start telling vending machine owners what they can and cannot sell. And then they'll start telling you what you can and cannot eat. It's all for your health, of course.