WorldNet Daily Wingnuttery On Health Care Reform

( – promoted by buhdydharma )

There is always value in knowing what our opponents are saying in any fight. Since Matt Barber of Liberty University and the Liberty Counsel insists in spamming the Dog’s public e-mail with his toxin, malignant idiocy, the Dog figures he might as well share it with his fellow Netroots activists.  Just a little background on the odious Mr. Barber; he is a graduate of Colorado Christian University, and has a J. D. from Regent University Law School, the same school that brought us Monica Goodling and so many other illegally hired ideologues in the Department of Justice. This slime ball is also a member of the Anti-gay group Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

Today Mr. Barber sent the Dog the full text of his latest article which the insane folks at World Net Daily have posted for him. Since it came in an e-mail, the Dog is going to feel free to reproduce the text in its entirety.

DOCTOR’S ORDERS

U.K. on Obamacare: Been there, done that

Exclusive: Matt Barber shares horror-story headlines from nation under gov’t medicine

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Posted: August 19, 2009

1:00 am Eastern

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Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address comes to mind. In the art of persuasion, it’s often most effective to paint in brief, colorful strokes.

A savvy reader with the handle “Jerseyvet” made an incisive observation after perusing my latest column concerning Obamacare:

“Start out with the premise that the demand for health care is infinite, but the supply is finite,” he wrote. “So health care has to be rationed. I trust the market, unfettered by governmental restrictions, more than the government. The Canadian and British systems of health care reinforce my belief.”

Jerseyvet – clearly one of those acerbate, “un-American” town hall “astroturfers” – has slung an arrow precisely through the heart of the matter.

Even Obama famously gaffed upon this weighty truth with his ill-advised postal services analogy on the free market vs. government care: “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine,” he noted, “It’s the post office that’s always having problems.” (Isn’t that precious? Seriously – did Joe Biden write that line?)

The president could have saved us all the trouble and just admitted: “Blue Cross and Blue Shield are doing just fine (with room for true free-market reform). It’s government health care that’s always having problems.”

Fittingly, it was British statesman Edmund Burke who observed, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”

Regrettably, unless “we the people” defeat liberals’ radical experiment in British-style health care, we’re destined to repeat the very dark history under which they (the Brits) presently live and needlessly die.

President Obama is on record: “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan,” he assured the AFL-CIO in 2003.

But Daniel Hannan – a popular British member of the European Parliament – recently warned us of what to expect should Obama’s vision come to fruition:

“If you want to see what a government-run health care system looks like, you need not look any further than the countries like Canada or Great Britain. They already have in place so-called universal health care, and the results, well, they’re not pretty.”

And, as you’re about to see, with the words “not pretty” Mr. Hannan has secured his spot in the “morose understatement hall of fame.”

The following headlines from Britain’s three leading newspapers, the Times, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, bear out Mr. Hannan’s ominous warning. Most of these stories are from 2009 and address the U.K.’s version of Obamacare (Britain’s “National Health Service,” or “NHS”.)

For a sobering exercise in reality, simply replace “NHS” with “Obamacare” everywhere it appears:

•”Cancer doctors do not tell patients about drugs which could prolong lives”

•”Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections”

•”A million failed asylum seekers (illegal immigrants) will get free NHS care in human rights U-turn”

•”Ruling ‘denies treatment to 100,000 Alzheimer’s patients'”

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•”Transsexuals win right to sex swap on NHS”

•”Patients risk going blind as NHS refuses treatment”

•”NHS targets ‘may have lead to 1,200 deaths’ in Mid-Staffordshire”

•”Patients with suspected cancer forced to wait so NHS targets can be hit”

•”Hospital chairman quits over dangerous targets”

•”Patients forced to wait hours in ambulances parked outside A&E departments”

•”NICE could deny drugs to stomach patients”

•”NHS staff face the sack if they discuss religion with patients”

•”11 serious errors a day in NHS surgery”

•”War hero refused treatment by NHS”

•”Cancer patient Linda O’Boyle dies after NHS ends free care over ‘top up'”

•”Drug addicts get priority access to swine flu vaccine”

•”Row as terminally ill woman given bed in hospital bathroom”

•”NHS staff ‘no longer asked if they would be treated in own hospital'”

•”Beat the NHS queue with a medical trip to Malaysia”

These headlines are the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more just like them with very real people and very real lives behind each.

Make no mistake: If we don’t sink this Obamacare Titanic before it sets sail, we become the headline.

We needn’t speculate. History is our crystal ball.

Like so much of the bullshit that Mr. Barber writes for his mouth breathing, barely literate audience, this article is starts with the moniker “Obamacare”. The Dog thinks this is a mistake, as it is clear from the Town Halls on Health Care the older folks on the Right like Medicare. Tying them together is probably a mistake tactically.

He starts out by comparing what a commenter is going to say to the Gettysburg address, the Dog says “Overreach much?” to this, but Conservative fruitcakes often have delusions of grandeur, though Mr. Barber is pushing this delusion on “Jerseyvet”.

The comment that Mr. Barber finds so persuasive is:

“Start out with the premise that the demand for health care is infinite, but the supply is finite,” he wrote. “So health care has to be rationed. I trust the market, unfettered by governmental restrictions, more than the government. The Canadian and British systems of health care reinforce my belief.”

It is a comment premised on faulty logic. The demand for health care is not infinite. There is a need for care; once people reach a good standard and are healthy they do not require more and more care. Of course older people and people with chronic illnesses do require more and sometimes escalating levels of care, but that is hardly the same as infinity. It is often a problem with the Rights arguments that they fail to understand the basic meaning of words, and then use these words to support a spurious argument.

Jerseyvet also fails to understand that there is no real market place for health insurance. 94% of all health insurance markets are highly concentrated, meaning one company has 42% or higher of the market share. Add to this the fact that usually there are two companies who have this high a share each and you see the invisible hand of the market has been handcuffed to a radiator somewhere.

Mr. Barber then goes on to make a big deal comparing the fact that Fed Ex and United Parcel Service are doing well but the Postal Service is not as some kind of proof which should be transferred to health care. The failing here is the Postal Service was set up for letter communications which are being out competed by e-mail. If the health insurance companies were forced to compete with a public option and it was a effective as e-mail they would have trouble too.

He then gives credit to Edmond Burke for George Santayana’s quote about history. How like a Conservative to get even that basic a fact wrong. Then Mr. Barber does the most egregious of his acts in this fetid like article. Instead of the venerable and despicable conservative practice of quote mining, he goes headline mining from the UK to support this contention the National Health System is a disaster for the 60 million people it covers.

Without taking the sensational nature of headlines in the UK into account, nor giving any insight into what the stories actually say he simply lists the worst headlines he could find. Now, is the Dog so naive as to think there are no problems in the NHS? Of course not, but isn’t it the role of the press to expose the problems so they can be remedied? Without reading all of these stories there is no way to know if they represent the vast majority of the experience of people under the British health system.

There are a couple which the Dog would like to point out which do not seem to be a problem. The right of transsexuals in transition to have their surgery covered is not a problem, it is appropriate medical treatment. That Mr. Barber has a problem with this is his religion showing once again.

Many of the stories he highlights mention the denial of certain drugs to patients. It is spurious to make this a problem with the British system when the US system does it on a daily basis as well and comes nowhere near covering the entire population with at least some level of care. We spend more on health care per person and yet do not come close to covering everyone and we deny lifesaving and necessary drugs here.

The final point is this one;

•”A million failed asylum seekers (illegal immigrants) will get free NHS care in human rights U-turn”

Not only does Mr. Barber’s innate fear of the “other” and bigotry show in including this headline, he has doctored it without making note of it, you can find the original headline and article from the Daily mail at this link. This is a failure of journalism (if you can call this journalism) which is as common on the Right as it is stunning.

In the end the Dog can only say of the totality of this article that he leave better writing in tightly coiled piles on the lawn on a daily basis. These are the kinds of lies and distortions the Right is feeding itself on a daily basis. Be aware and be ready to refute this crap. It is all they have, but they are using it to the fullest.

The floor is yours.