It’s official, I really am quite toxic . . .
For ages many of my readers have thought my views toxic. Well now I am officially toxic and they can rejoice that they have been proven right.
I even have a small yellow sticker that declares to the entire world that I am radioactive.
Last Monday my nasty little prostate was invaded by 56 radioactive seeds and they will happily munch through all those nasty little cancerous cells until they are all gone!
In the meantime I have my radioactive sticker that warns small children and pregnant women to keep their distance.
However the real purpose is to alert border guards in the US of my approach. Otherwise the poor frightened dears will assume that I am a terrorist and zap me the moment I set foot on the soil of the land of the free and the home of the brave.
What is more significant is that the superb treatment that NGH provided for me would be denied many millions of American citizens if the absurd policies of the Republican Party presidential hopefuls were ever realised.
In a provincial British hospital I was treated as well as Phil the Greek was in another provincial British hospital over Christmas and, like me, Phil’s stent was free at the point of need, courtesy of the National Health Service.
Yet just listen to the boneheads of the American right as they denounce “Obamacare” (a pale imitation of our NHS) as being “socialist” medicine.
Some years ago I experienced private enterprise medicine in the US. I had a painful big toe and when I found walking almost impossible I was taken to the ER at the local hospital in Daly City outside San Francisco.
The care was excellent and my ingrowing toenail was attended to by a young doctor who looked like Trapper from MASH and his exuberant Latino nursing assistant.
They assured me that the screams from elsewhere in the clinic was simply a cocaine addict going through some cold turkey.
According to Trapper it was just another day in the everyday story down in the local drunk tank.
However the scary part was not the addicts or the grim environment but the insistence on seeing my insurance before the 15 minute procedure and the bill that pursued me for $800!
Surely it is the measure of a civilised society that healthcare is not a luxury or a rationed service available only to those who can pay, but is a right for every citizen.
What is worrying is the mindset that drives right wing Americans to condemn universal health care is the same imperative that is driving this coalition government.
Now I do not believe that Tories and their yellow poodles are inherently bad or uncaring or greedy. There are even Tories who think a bonus for the CEO at RBS is probably a bit too ostentatious, but the problem lies in the DNA of your average Tory.
You see their world view was not so much formed in Victorian times, when thrift and hard work and all that old tosh were the order of the day.
No, most Tories are rooted further back in Elizabethan times, when the merchants and the gentry lived in mortal fear of the “sturdy beggars” who roamed the countryside.
They quite liked the snivelling and humble poor who crawled before the masters and touched their forelocks (or whatever else came to hand) when the boss approached.
The Elizabethan Poor Laws were designed to separate the deserving poor from the undeserving poor and it was the masters who determined in what category any poor churl belonged.
Listen to our ruling elite today and you hear the echoes of a bygone age!
So they have instinctively always hated any universal benefit that might improve the human condition, be it child benefit, unemployment benefit, housing benefit, disability benefit or healthcare.
“The NHS is safe in our hands” has become the cliché that defines this government and its “caring” facade. But the truth is that many in the coalition ranks cast envious glances over to the American free market in healthcare and long to replicate it here.
Our health service is far too valuable to allow mediocre Tory politicians to ruin it and when doctors, nurses, midwives and every professional who works in health care all condemn the Government’s “reforms”, then it’s time for a rethink.
And if you’re still not convinced that privatised medicine is no bad thing, consider the dodgy private clinics, who in order to make even more money have sold sub-standard breast implants. Anyone feel safe in their hands?
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