The Brits are halfway there already.”

How would you know, foreigner?

It seems a simple equation really. You have a socialised healthcare system based on general taxation which provides a good level of health care, free at the point of need.

Over time the costs of possible healthcare exceed the acceptable revenue input (as we can cure more, costs go up and treatments get more expensive).

So the logical practice is to then ration the socialised healthcare according to criteria in addition to need. For instance, many surgeons are reluctant to do liver transplants on alcoholics. Their reasoning is that they will be providing maybe 1 year of life for the alcoholic and 5 years for the non-alcoholic. Is this nice? No. Is it fair, it is hard to see why not.

The point often forgotten is that there is not *only* the NHS in the UK, there is a thriving private sector as well. If you want to keep drinking and get your liver transplant then you’ll have to pay for it. If not then, well, tough decisions have to be made in a world of finite resources and infinite need.

The gag really is that few people are arguing for one thing or the other. You would agree (I presume) that a portion of your tax revenue should got towards basic healthcare for the poor and vulnerable. I would never countenance someone who wanted to prevent someone from paying for their own healthcare. What is being disputed is the degree to which we fund the taxpayer version against expecting people to use the private version.

In the UK we have a system that allows you to get all emergency care and most clinical care under the shared socialised model but allows you to go outside that model if you want to.

In the US you have a system that allows you to get some emergency care (in some circumstances) and some clinical care (in some circumstances) but expects to you to be using the private model if you possibly can.

Someone who lives into their 80’s, constantly having health issues even though he doesn’t smoke or eat bad foods is where this is headed. We will eventually ration health care based on use, not need. The less you use the system, the longer you live.

The Brits are halfway there already.

Though these are anecdotal, my grandmother lived to just shy of 106, following pretty much the lifestyle of your father that you outlined. A friends grandmother, though falling considerably short of 106, still lived a long time, but drank and smoked as she wished.

For me, I do what I want, when I want, how I want and am willing to accept a premature demise for my choices, because they are my choices. That said, I’ve eaten my way through many dire warnings about this food or that, that are subsequently found to be so much hooey and reversed. So even though it feels like I might be doing bad to my body, the odds are it ain’t as bad as they want me to believe; so who knows how the cards will play out for my longevity?

Either way, I’m at peace with my decisions. If the circumstances arise, I’m far more likely to pull a “Zevon” and run out the last months/year the same way I did the rest of my life, rather than opt for operations/transplants etc. and get hooked up to machines in a sterile environment.

This is exactly the first step that was called for by backers of the Eugenics Movement in the early 20th century. To create a healthier society in which society’s resources were best used people should be tested. _Forced_ to undergo examination.

Alexander Graham Bell thought that he saw a disproportinate rate of deafness in Martha’s Vineyard. He thought that the best way to insure the public health was to prvent people who came from families with a high rate of deafness from getting married. In those days that meant no children. Today’s eugenics enthusiasts tout embryonic testing and gene testing. Now it’s a woman and a couple’s choice. How long before that became The State’s choice? Particularly inlight of Edward’s comments?

Neither Bell nor the proponents of pre-natal testing are evil people. None would ever envisage the horrors that Eugenics turned into.

No one ever thinks about the slope before they slide down it. Which is why remembering history is _so_ important.

If disease is genetic then no amount of ‘preventative care’ is going to alter the possibility that I will probably die of some cancer or heart-related issue no matter what I do; if it’s not genetic then I’ll probably die of something else.

My point is even if the government were to take away our personal liberty by requiring ‘preventative care’ we will still have to contend with incurable death and disease so why impose Collectivism in order to save us.

I’m an American who’s been living in Dresden, Germany for the past 2 years, and, yes, there are still problems here, but many of the German people I’ve met struggle with the opinion that the world has of them, based on what happened here in the 20th century.

The title of your post does nothing to help. This kind of German-bashing goes on in the American media every day - just turn on your TV and watch for a while (I did, on my last visit to America). How would you like it if every time someone mentioned Americans, they made cheap, obvious references to slavery? You’d be pissed off.

I really enjoy reading this site every day. Please Rick, think before you type something like that.

What, the liberty not to get a letter? My point, equally simple, is that the penalty of getting a letter reminding you to attend is *not* a penalty in any meaningful sense.

But then I’m a foreigner, so what would I know…

“What kind of freak would object to free or reasonably priced health care? If they say decline, we know they can be fast-tracked into the mental health portion of the screening.”

So if we’re healthy and say we don’t NEED to see a doctor, fast-track us into psych evals, jpe? Is that what you’re saying?

You miss the point entirely. The issue isn’t free health care. The issue is compulsion. People can refuse medical treatment in this country and always have been able to. If chump don’t want no help, chump don’t get no help. Consequences are the patients.

What should we have, a medical concentration camp for medical care dissidents, jpe? Or are you just an Edwards campaigner standing by your well-coiffed guy?

It is not a question of whether I exaggerated a lot in order to make a singular point.

The point is simple, direct, and I wouldn’t expect a foreigner to understand it:

John Edwards proposal is an affront to liberty, the essence of which is choice. I don’t care if the “penalties” are mild or not. The idea that compulsion of any kind is involved smacks of tyranny.

The left doesn’t get it. They gave up on liberty long ago. And foreigners don’t understand this concept of liberty quite the way we Americans think about it.