The Patriot Post® · Beware Universal Healthcare Requirements

“Fat shaming doesn’t need to end; it needs to make a comeback. Some amount of shame is good. We shamed people out of smoking and into wearing seat belts. We shamed them out of littering and most of them out of racism. Shame is the first step in reform.” —Bill Maher

“When the British went to war exactly 80 years ago they swiftly lost the individual freedom to make fundamental choices over the way they lived. … And there was one other curtailment of individual choice that touched every home in the land: what people could eat.” —Daily Beast columnist Clive Irving

“The balance that we have to strike here, frankly, is about what government can and should do around creating incentives and then banning certain behaviors.” —Democrat presidential candidate Kamala Harris, in response to a question about changing government dietary guidelines regarding consumption of red meat to address the impact of climate change

It is no secret that every Democrat candidate for president supports some version of government-run healthcare. It is also no secret that the vast majority of people on board with the idea view such healthcare in terms of having insurance that gives them better, and ostensibly cheaper, access to to doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers.

What those same people don’t see? Ultimately, government run healthcare isn’t about healthcare. It’s about the further accumulation of power. Power to determine who gets what — or who gets nothing at all, unless certain “conditions” are met.

“Patients with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of over 40 will not be referred for routine surgery unless they are able to reduce it to under that number over a nine-month period. … Patients with a BMI over 30 but under 40 will also be required to reduce that figure to under 30 or lose 10 per cent of their weight before they are considered for surgery. … Smokers [must] quit for eight weeks before they are referred for surgery. A breath test will be used to detect the levels of carbon monoxide in their blood.” —Independent UK, Oct. 18 — 2017

“The tragic reality is this planet simply can’t sustain billions of people consuming industrially produced animal agriculture because of environmental impact. It’s just not possible, as China, as Africa move toward consuming meat the same way America does because we just don’t have enough land.” —Democrat presidential candidate Cory Booker

Booker, like many of his fellow Democrats, support the Green New Deal. An analysis of that plan was done by the Food & Environment Reporting Network, which noted that one section of it called for “working collaboratively with farmers and ranchers in the United States to eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector as much as is technologically feasible.” That work included “supporting family farming,” “investing in sustainable farming and land use practices that increase soil health,” and “building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food.”

First, when do people begin to understand that universal healthcare and the Green New Deal are two sides of the same power-accumulating coin? Second, when does the same Democrat Party that told Americans they could keep their doctors, hospitals, and health insurance, substitute coercion for collaboration, aimed at farmers and other food producers who remain insufficiently “woke” regarding “suggestions” that ultimately become demands?

And who is still naive enough to believe access to healthcare won’t include additional dietary — or even exercise — requirements?

Moreover, availability is also part of the equation. Those who tout systems like the aforementioned NHS apparently glide over the reality that more than 20,000 cancer patients miss out on radiotherapy every year. Why? Because the agency doesn’t refer them for it, according to a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Radiotherapy, which further noted that a shortage of radiographers exacerbated the problem. Moreover, the NHS’s Continuing Healthcare program sounds just like America’s VA. “At least 1,000 sick, elderly or disabled people die waiting for nursing care every year,” The Express reports.

What about Canada? “Unless you live in Canada and have the dubious pleasure of experiencing the one-tier system of finding a family doctor, wait times in hospitals, wait times for imagery exams, wait times to see specialists and wait times for treatment or surgery, you can’t really appreciate the true meaning of the word ‘affordable’ in Canada’s very affordable public health care,” reveals Canadian resident Valerie Sobel. “Canada’s single-payer public health care system, heavily funded by taxpayers, forced over one million patients to wait for necessary medical treatments last year. An all-time record in a country of only 36 million. The only thing Canadians are guaranteed is a spot on a waitlist.”

America has nearly 10 times that many people, and anyone who thinks bureaucracy — what universal healthcare is really all about — gets more efficient or more compassionate as the population increases is utterly delusional.

What’s the realistic alternative? “A Powell River, [British Columbia], man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) opted for a medically assisted death last Tuesday after years of struggling to fund 24-hour care that kept him close to his son,” the CBC website reported last month.

The man’s name was Sean Tagert. He was only 41 years old, and he had an 11-year-old son.

Why did he opt for medically assisted suicide that is legal in Canada? “Vancouver Coastal Health offered him 15.5 hours of home care under the Choice in Supports for Independent Living program but not the 24-hour care he needed,” CBC adds. “Tagert was later offered as much as 20 hours per day, which his doctor said was still not enough.”

Columnist John Ellis gets it exactly right. “A single-payer health care system will always sink to the lowest common denominator, removing choice,” he explains. “If death is more efficient for the system, then death it will be.”

But not before one is forced to abide certain requirements aimed at keeping the system more “efficient.” Today in Britain, it’s the obese and smokers who are targeted.

Tomorrow, in America? It isn’t hard to imagine the following scenario:

Mr. Smith, according to your government-provided pulsometer, data from which was automatically downloaded to the government’s healthcare evaluation website, you didn’t do the required amount of aerobic exercise this week. Until you get back on track, consider your healthcare coverage suspended.