(Guestpost from Drew)
Yesterday, a woman asked John McCain at one of his town halls, “What’s so wrong about government-provided health care?”
John McCain halfway smiled, and then answered, “An excellent question, my dear.” With a twinkle in his eye, he went on, ”Let this Old Maverick tell you a story…
“Once a upon a time, in a land of kings, some socialists got together to complain about the imperfect medical industry. They aimed their protests against against capitalism, even though the country itself was feudal and not capitalistic. Before long, these socialists took power. They now had the perfect opportunity to implement their utopian goal of socialized medicine.
“In 1918, the Soviet Union became the first country to promise universal ‘cradle-to-grave’ healthcare coverage, to be accomplished through the complete socialization of medicine. The ‘right to health’ became a ‘constitutional right’ of Soviet citizens.
“The proclaimed advantages of this system were that it would ‘reduce costs’ and eliminate the ‘waste’ that stemmed from ‘unnecessary duplication and parallelism’ — i.e., competition.”
Suddenly the woman interrupted, “Oh, I see now that you are talking about history. But Senator McCain, do we really care about all this historical –”
The old man quickly brushed her objection aside, and continued his tale. “Soon, the socialist plan began going awry,” he said:
“The system had many decades to work, but widespread apathy and low quality of work paralyzed the healthcare system. In the depths of the socialist experiment, healthcare institutions in Russia were at least a hundred years behind the average US level. Moreover, the filth, odors, cats roaming the halls, drunken medical personnel, and absence of soap and cleaning supplies added to an overall impression of hopelessness and frustration that paralyzed the system. According to official Russian estimates, 78 percent of all AIDS victims in Russia contracted the virus through dirty needles or HIV-tainted blood in the state-run hospitals.
“So no, there were no death panels,” explained the Old Maverick. “There was mostly just death.
“To improve the statistics concerning the numbers of people dying within the system, patients were routinely shoved out the door before taking their last breath.
“And as you might expect, this inferior health care system proved insufficient for the government officials ruling the country. Naturally, they exempted themselves from the plan.
“So, as in all countries with socialized medicine, a two-tier system was created: one for the “gray masses” and the other, with a completely different level of service, for the bureaucrats and their intellectual servants. In the USSR, it was often the case that while workers and peasants were dying in the state hospitals, the medicine and equipment that could save their lives was sitting unused in the nomenklatura system.
“And that’s exactly what my colleagues in the Congress are planning to do now!” shouted the wild old man, to thunderous applause from the audience.
Hmm…hey, wait a minute…I’m actually not sure if McCain really said any of that. I may be mixing up reality with one of my dreams.
