-By Warner Todd Huston
The National Center for Public Policy (nationalcenter.org) has assembled a compendium of horror stories of the “shattered lives” of 100 victims of government healthcare from all over the western world. This book serves as a warning to every advocate of the “free” healthcare that Obama is trying to sell like snake-oil from a traveling case. If government gets control of our healthcare, our entire system will be worse off for it.
In “Shattered Lives: One Hundred Victims of Government Health Care,” author Amy Ridenour presents us with 100 heartwrenching stories of healthcare victims from Canada, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and other western nations, stories that should serve as a warning against our blundering down the destructive path of nationalized healthcare.
Ridenour regales us with tales of self-dentistry because government healthcare refuses service, deaths over canceled operations or long-delayed treatment, and citizens that had to flee their own country to find lifesaving healthcare in other lands. There are tales of babies born in home toilets because government healthcare refused to see a pregnant mother, diseases undiagnosed, and restrictive and ill-conceived rationing to services causing blindness and other ailments.
One Canadian patient was told that she’d have to wait four and a half months to see if her brain tumor was malignant or not. Another Canadian woman died after waiting three years for a heart operation. A pregnant Canadian woman was turned away to deliver her baby at home because no hospital beds were empty for her.
In Australia there are stories of months and years-long waiting lists, refusal of service, misdiagnosis, and deaths caused by its nationalized healthcare system. The same can be said of nationalized systems in South Africa, Sweden, Japan, Russia, and New Zealand.
This book is a reminder that government healthcare is not built on patient’s needs but is built on cold rationing and one-size-fits-all standards that do not take any personalized care into account. It is also the exact opposite of any kind of healthcare that we should ever want to impose on our fellows. Let Ridenour’s work serve as a warning against the horrors that will be Obamacare.
A free .pdf of the book can be downloaded at the NCPP’s site.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as NewsBusters.org, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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