Video & Multimedia
In reply to the discussion: Pic Of The Moment: You've Really Been Reduced To THIS? [View all]Fortinbras Armstrong
(4,473 posts)There was one conservative who kept posting articles on problems in British hospitals (for some reason, they all came from the Daily Mail or the Daily Telegraph -- two right-wing newspapers), and pointed to them as showing that Britain's National Health Service should be shut down. Taking unusual examples and pretending that they are the norm is a great example of the logical fallacy of the Unrepresentative Sample.
Another conservative used to post that the NHS was having funding problems (this was during the Thatcher years, when the NHS was being systematically starved of money) and claiming that the British could no longer afford it, so they should switch to something closer to the American system of private health insurance. I said that this was the same as "We can't afford a Toyota, so we should buy a Bentley."
The massive illogic that conservatives use to damn anything even remotely approaching socialized medicine is stunning. Of course, ACA is NOT socialized medicine. What I want is something along the lines of the NHS (government-paid health care) or Health Canada (single payer); I know what conniptions the conservatives would have if I were to suggest the French system, in which healthcare professionals are government employees.
BTW, do you know who instituted the first government-run health insurance? It was Prince Otto von Bismarck, probably the most conservative German leader of the 19th century. Bismarck did it for two reasons: To steal the socialists' thunder by instituting a program they called for; and because he believed (correctly) that it was a good thing for the German people. For the same reasons, he also instituted government sponsored old age pensions, accident insurance and unemployment insurance.