Britons not helping themselves by defending their wretched healthcare system
Wow, following the controversy over Obama's attempt to mimic Britain's healthcare system, which in turn has led to criticism of the UK's own NHS, the Brits are mad and going to extremes to defend their socialist approach, and the MSM itself is only too happy to back them up:
While we're on the subject, Rudy Giuliani has told Politico (via Hot Air) that Obama has only himself to blame for the whole debacle.
LONDON (AP) - Britons reacted with outrage Friday at American criticism of the country's health care system and defended their cradle-to-grave medical coverage on Twitter, television and in the tabloids.Gee, do they really think they're helping themselves this way? Because looking at the rest of this:
Right-wing attacks on President Barack Obama's health reform plans have struck a nerve in Britain, where residents broadly take for granted their universal coverage under the state-funded National Health Service - and look askance at the millions of Americans without insurance.
"Land of the Fee," declared the Daily Mirror in reference to the United States' high-charging health model. The London newspaper called the "lies and distortions" being circulated in the United States about the National Health Service "truly sickening."
"Jaw droppingly untruthful," said the British Medical Association's chairman, Hamish Meldrum.
"NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death," Prime Minister Gordon Brown tweeted. "Thanks for always being there."
Even British health campaigner Kate Spall - who criticizes NHS failings in U.S. television ads produced by Conservatives for Patients' Rights, a lobby group that opposes Obama's plans - declared that the group had misled her and was distorting her true views. Spall's mother died of kidney cancer while waiting for treatment.
"There are failings in the system but I'm not anti-NHS at all," Spall told the British Broadcasting Corp.
"I help the vulnerable patients in our country that come to me for help, those that have been denied treatment," she said. "So the irony is, the people that are falling through the net in the U.S. are patients that I would support anyway."
Britain's opposition Conservative Party is distancing itself from its maverick member of European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, who has criticized the NHS on U.S. news programs.
Conservative leader David Cameron dismissed Hannan as having "eccentric views."
In an e-mail to Conservative Party workers published on his blog, Cameron said millions, including his own family, were grateful for NHS-provided care.
"Just look at all the support which the NHS has received on Twitter over the last couple of days," he wrote. "It is a reminder - if one were needed - of how proud we in Britain are of the NHS."
The NHS, founded in 1948, is the cornerstone of the United Kingdom's welfare state.Doesn't that tell why the very idea Obama is proposing is bad for the US? Sometimes private health care businesses can pay, even when you have to pay!
About 12 percent of the UK's 61 million residents have private insurance, but the vast majority rely on state-funded emergency care, surgery and access to family doctors. Even those who complain about the system say they want it improved, not dismantled.
British officials acknowledge that their system has been struggling to cope and faces a 15 billion pound ($24 billion) deficit. Hospitals are often overcrowded, dirty and understaffed, which means some patients do not get the care they are promised.
While we're on the subject, Rudy Giuliani has told Politico (via Hot Air) that Obama has only himself to blame for the whole debacle.
Giuliani, in an exclusive interview with POLITICO prior to delivering the keynote address to the second annual GOPAC conference in Chicago, said the president has allowed fears of so-called “death panels” to persist because the White House has not taken a strong enough hand in crafting health care legislation.Palin and Giuliani are both right on this subject.
“They never really studied the legislation that has been proposed,” Giuliani said. “The reason for the concern about the death panels is the legislation and the claim by the president that he will cover thirty to fifty million people without cost, and any time you say it’s without costs you raise a number of concerns.”
“It has to be with cost, because it costs money with every single person that is covered. That cost has to come from somewhere, which means something has to be cut,” the former Republican presidential candidate explained. “So where are you going to decrease services? There is a great fear that it will be by cutting off care for the elderly.”
Like former Alaska GOP Gov. Sarah Palin, Giuliani insisted that some of the president’s “closest advisors” have advocated for the creation of “death panels” to determine the course of treatment for some elderly and infirm Americans.
“If they’re concerned that they’ve created this massive groundswell that is worried about death panels, the only ones they have to blame are themselves,” Giuliani said of the Obama administration. “If they would like to end it, they should change the legislation, remove all these end of life panels, remove these czars and come clean with the American people that it is going to cost them a lot of money.”
Labels: londonistan, Moonbattery, msm foulness, United States
