In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, “Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me and I’m dead.” Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead. – The Office
Thankfully we have the United Nations – where governments that oppose free speech can finally be heard.
On Monday, November 4, 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) of North Bristol, like my ex-wife, implemented a policy to deny service to people whose opinions they don’t like. The italicized text directly below is me quoting the NHS directly.
The abusive behaviour policy covers anyone (visitors or patients – J.W.) with mental capacity making (sic):
- Racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour.
- Excessive noise.
- Abuse of alcohol or drugs.
- Threatening and offensive language.
- Malicious allegations.
- Intentional damage to trust property.
I’m pretty sure my ex-wife’s list is shorter, consisting of only one item: “Being John Wilder.â€Â Breaking those NHS rules will get you banned from the hospital. If you are a patient, they’ll at least wait until your life isn’t in immediate danger. And then they won’t serve you anymore.
You can read it all here (LINK). First, I’m assuming that whoever wrote the web page knew English, but the English spell it behaviour – we spell it behavior. They spell it colour, we spell it color. Flavour? No, flavor. I guess that must be why George Washington texted King George “LOL, getting rid of u†in 1776. Second, this seems like a pretty reasonable list, right? How could you be upset about those things? If someone were coming into my place of business, I’d kick them out for doing many of the things listed.
But this isn’t a private business – this is the provider of healthcare for 90%+ of the population of the United Kingdom. And the plain language that you and I might agree was reasonable will morph over time. A guy casting a porno movie is being investigated for a hate crime in Britain because he didn’t want to cast a transsexual with, um, man parts for the porno he was filming about sex between a man and a woman. Why is that a hate crime? Because the transsexual (who, I remind you, has man parts) identifies as female and wants to play the woman’s part in a porno, but without having woman parts.
Yeah. I need a scorecard, too.
I guess there’s no Internet in Farmington, NM.
But the silliness doesn’t stop there: a comedian that goes by the Internet name “Count Dankula†was sentenced to an £800 fine for teaching his girlfriend’s dog a trick. Was the trick eating toddlers? No. The trick was teaching the dog a salute that was fairly popular in Germany between 1932 and 1945. Why would he do that? He was irritating his girlfriend, and unless he can teach the dog to pilot a bulldog-scale Messerschmitt Bf-109, I think the United Kingdom is safe. Since the dog was featured on a YouTube® video, it is, therefore: hate crime.
Given the two examples above, if I were British, I’d have zero confidence in the way those “reasonable†points on the list above would be interpreted in the future. Deny white privilege? Obviously hate speech – we’re not going to work on your broken leg. Oppose continual reparations for (INSERT GROUP HERE)? Obviously racist – we’re sending you to racist jail!
Help me eliminate all Cancers. Then we’ll move to the Capricorns.
Great Britain has had the National Health Service since 1948, since they decided that German bombs weren’t effective enough at destroying their economy. I kid. The English seem to generally like the NHS – like Social Security in the United States it appears to be a political third rail. Touch it, and your career in eating crumpets, bangers, mash, and drinking tea in Parliament is over and it’s back to fish and chips and sending your children to the mill so you have enough money to buy cheap gin.
The service has drawbacks, but seems to work for the English, for now. I have some doubts about long-term viability, but I’m not British, so I don’t get a vote. But “Baby Oliver†is alive today (LINK) because even though the NHS refused to operate on him, he got surgery in the United States. It appears that the NHS learned their lesson with that publicity – they wouldn’t even let “Baby Alfie†out of the country (LINK).
On the bright side, dentistry is free(ish), too.
The British have sensitive teeth. They’re so sensitive, just saying that offends them.
The kicker is, of course, the control. The most ominous line in the press release is:
Any cases will be reported on the trust’s (a subdivision of the NHS – J.W.) incident management system and on patients’ individual notes.
Back when I was in grade school, teachers would say in a really grave tone that certain behavior would end up “on our Permanent Record.â€Â They really said that, and you could hear the capital letters when they spoke. It was as if that in some far-flung future where Snake Plisskin was attempting to break the President out of New York and I was applying for a job and it would still be in the Permanent Record.
The Secret Service expenses for all of the living ex-presidents are highest for Bill Clinton. That party bus ain’t gonna drive itself!
I imagined that when I finally got that great interview to be Starship Captain or whatever the interviewer would pull out a copy of my Permanent Record, shake his head disapprovingly, and say, “I’m sorry, Mr. Wilder. We simply cannot offer you a job because in fifth grade you called Brenda Vincent, a,†he would then take a long pause and adjust his glasses while staring at the paper, “poopy haired chum smuggler. We simply cannot have a man like that at Enron®.â€
In reality, my Permanent Record from grade school was probably sent to a landfill when they tore the building down. Brenda’s bait smuggling history is now lost to eternity.
But in 2019 we really do have permanent records, and in greater detail than most people realize. I get ads on my laptop in the evening that relate to conversations that I had in the afternoon when the laptop was off but my phone was nearby. There are networks of cameras that cross the nation that track license plates. If you use a credit card, you can be tracked from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel. Your Internet search history? If your ISP doesn’t have it, the NSA does. Speaking of job interviews – you don’t really have to apply to the NSA – they already have your resume, cover letter, and know all of your references.
At least someone is interested in my life.
Increasingly in our “capitalist†system, people with unpopular opinions keep getting being censored, but it gets worse. Recently, Stefan Molyneux, who is more of a libertarian than anything, was kicked off of PayPal® – though at this writing those links were still up. If he were in the U.K., he might be denied medical services as well, and since he’s suffering from Stage 4 baldness, I hate to think about the potential future complications.
To be clear: in a socialist medical system, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to deny you medical service, and hope that you die. In a capitalist technocracy, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to silence you, deny you banking services, and hope that you die.
This will be a factor in your life. Life may get very rough before it gets better, and “rough†may last quite a few years. But I tend to think that the Right will win in the end. Why?
Because my ex-wife is on the Left. And I wasn’t sure about Hell until I met her. Now I’m sure.
So if there’s Hell?
There’s Heaven. Onward, my friends!
Another very humorous ( with a u) and entertaining article Mr Wilder, but I have a question for you (with a u too) ….. Was your ex wife a lefty when you married her, or did u, sorry, you, help turn her into one? If yes to the former, why? And if yes to the latter, why? 😉
She was not a Lefty when we divorced – although (true story) I heard that she threatened to leave the country and move to Europe if Trump won. Sadly, she did not follow through- otherwise Trump really would have Made America Great Again.
The (intended?) consequences of this policy will be to rid the NHS rolls of older Brits who remember what England used to be like, and also require the most expensive care.
Ouch. Probably true, though.
Before, when America was great: My dad can beat your dad!
Now: my ex-wife is more evil than your ex-wife!
Progress.
Love ya, bro. Keep it up.
Back at ya! I haven’t talked to mine in seven or so years. She was pleasant at the time. Seven is not long enough, though.
These are interesting times. Considering the number of Baby Boomers, their experience during the Vietnam era, the realization that it’s better to go out in a blaze of glory than whimpering for another pain killer, and how they have the most experience with some fantastic technology, socialized medicine may become a risky career choice.
I’ll let my legs hang down and watch.
That might be the subject of a future post – if I can ever figure out how to write it. Or, maybe a book. The Mrs. has her keyboard warmed up . . . .
What is unstated but very clear about the new NHS rules. They will almost exclusively apply to actual English people, who enjoy the white privilege of being relegated to second class status in their own nation. If someone from a doodie-hole nation (avoiding your moderation filter) that has the manners of a yak is being loud and abusive, is drunk or saying naughty things? You can bet no one will say a word because being called “racist” is the worst thing that can happen to you. They can’t even stop them from running massive r@pe gangs because investigating the abuse of English girls is also racist, better to focus on NatSoc pugs.
England is a lost cause and will make Pakistan look like a utopia in about 10 years. Makes me kind of rethink that whole rescuing them in the 1940s thing. Who *actually* won World War II?
True enough – it appears you can be as rude as you want – as long as you are not actually English.
I wonder if there is any example from history of a much more powerful and wealthy society essentially surrendering itself to a weaker, less advanced culture?
Mongols invading China, for one.
The loss of free speech is the most critical battle of all these days. Here’s the most important editorial I’ve read lately about this. I totally agree.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/a_new_kind_of_tyranny_the_global_states_war_on_those_who_speak_truth_to_power
Nice link – as usual. Thanks!
You misplace your displeasure. To wit:
1) This idea is nothing new.
As I’m fond of telling people (particularly at work, in the E.R.), back around 1800, after the Revolution, all health care in France was free. And hospitals specialized, i.e. in childbirth, or skin disease, or burns, etc., and thus kept track of what treatment worked, and what didn’t, which is precisely the combination (treatment + statistical analysis) that moved health care from medieval witchdoctory to modern medicine.
But the one proviso was this: as long as you were compliant with the treatment plan of the doctor.
You were free to refuse. Whereupon they picked up your pallet, carried it to the curb, and they bade you “God be with you, Mssr.” and left you to fend for yourself.
Which is the exact treatment model we should be using now.
This policy is even simpler: they are refusing to treat people so obnoxious they shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere.
2) The problem isn’t the policy. Which is, in point a fact, a model for how EVERY hospital should operate. Throw the rude and obnoxious f**kers right out the door, with extreme prejudice, and a hearty “DLTDHYITAOYWO!” ringing in their ears as the door slams shut behind them.
Brilliance exemplified!
The Problem, Gentle Reader, was ever allowing government to control health care decisions for anyone, ever, at any time.
Keep the policy, and privatize the health care, and you solve all your worries.
Being a jackass in public becomes a self-limiting problem, with Darwinian precision, if you burn all your bridges at every hospital for 100 miles (as many of our local patients hereabouts have already done).
But a government monopoly on the whole system?
That’s a disaster with legs, in Leviathan proportions.
Exactly as the NHS is, and why every country than can do so is dismantling its public health system with all possible rapidity.
They’re black holes of Fail. Always, and like all communistic endeavors, as indicated by Mrs. Thatcher, “eventually, you run out of other people’s money“.
But don’t damn the policy, which is necessary when treating entitled baboons from the Turd World Diversity and the dregs of society, with exactly the manners that appellation would indicate. Such a policy is pure survival instinct. Even if it’s open to abuse and misinterpretation.
Simply take the entire power of life and death out of the hands of government clipboard commandos, and all your problems go away at a pen stroke.
NHS is asking for no more than you demand of guests in your own living room.
Look at it again, and tell me it isn’t so.
It’s impossible to argue cogently against requirements for correct public behavior, even knowing the lengths to some extremist harridans will stretch their interpretations.
The problem isn’t that power.
It’s the power to shut you out of not a private home, but access to life support.
Giving that power to the government was the height of folly, and the root and branch of your entire objection.
Stop swatting the leaves.
If you really want to remove the tree, go after the root.
Then the leaves will take care of themselves.
Amen.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it makes sense. If you have loads of different medical samurai operating in a civil society, both the obnoxious med sammies and the obnoxious peasants can avoid each other.
(Having had to stagger off the operating table to prevent a surgeon from carving me open after an epidural because he thought I was lying about being able to feel my toes as he jabbed them, has cured me of blind agreement with doctors’s programmes. Oh! And the SJW cardiologist who insisted that my arrhythmia could only be treated by my going vegan. And– but you get the picture)
Mr. Aesop, have you read Theodore Dalrymple’s Life At The Bottom? Memoirs of a prison doctor. It specifically addressed this:
But don’t damn the policy, which is necessary when treating entitled baboons from the Turd World Diversity and the dregs of society,
In that one is quite specifically enjoined AGAINST deploying those very useful rules you point out on entitled baboons. And also that deploying it against imported baboons, will (now) send the ER staff to peison.
I hope you will read the book, and consider the above points and repost, because you make a good case that rules-and effective penalties for the violation thereof- governing civil behavior are essential.
“Simply take the entire power of life and death out of the hands of government clipboard commandos, and all your problems go away at a pen stroke.”
Absolutely.
But.
There is zero political will anywhere across the spectrum for that. Who with any sort of serious influence is advocating this, or getting the government out of the student loan business or any of a myriad of other issues?
These are lessons to learn now and put into practice when we rebuild, right now the fight is in a very different place.
Well said. The system is broken, badly, and I think it will take the entire system breaking down to fix it, if then.
Do you really think they’ll hold the non-English to the policy?
You are a terrible man, Mr. Wilder. This is a serious and frightening topic, and here I am laughing my aged patootie off. “Brenda’s bait smuggling operation -!”
snorfle.
Heh heh – I liked writing that one.
Aesop, as usual, is right. The cure is getting the effing government out of control. Compounded by @ArthurSido’s observation that we’re heading in the opposite direction as fast as the fat legged democrats can move us, and the right never defends the free market
The free market works everywhere. It’s the reason you can almost buy 48″ screen LED TVs at the dollar store which were several thousands when they came out. But somehow it won’t work for medical care? The only aspects of medicine where the free market works (those not covered by insurance) get cheaper. Everything else goes up at 3x inflation.
Any time speech is regulated by government, speech becomes government speech,
The reason large screen TVs are so cheap is partly improved technology but mostly because you can make them in repressive Asian nations where the workers barely make subsistence level wages and ship them safely and cheaply to the U.S. because the shipping lanes are kept open by 11 U.S. carrier groups.
I realize you say “partly due” to slave labor rates, but reality is that the more sophisticated the electronics the lower the cost due to labor. Last time I did the research, the lowest labor rates weren’t in the orient anyway. They were in Botswana.
Since the only role of the fleet protection at sea could be is preventing loss from piracy, I know of no way to estimate that cost.
My point is the iron rule of manufacturing that says the more you make, the cheaper the piece. Economists usually say that for any manufacturing, quantity doubling makes the price drop by 1/4 to 1/3. In electronics, integration lowers costs; that means reducing the parts count by putting more functions in one package. The drawback is that developing those circuits is expensive. What we get is a race, driven by the market forces to put the cheapest, best TV on the shelf to win the lion’s share of the market. Companies bet money by spending to reduce parts count, and add features.
In cosmetic surgery that isn’t covered by insurance, the downward trend of costs can’t be due to those principles. It’s always one doctor operating on one patient at a time. It’s doctors constantly looking for more efficient way to do the surgery and better ways to assure positive outcomes; no infections, and positive results. But those are still positive outcomes due to market forces pushing for lower price and higher quality.
Great point – I love bringing up cosmetic surgery to Leftists I know – medical costs really can come down.
Does anyone get the feeling that if the elites decreed that everyone must have their thumbs amputated, Americans would agree that the law makes sense and must be obeyed?
You know that amputations will soon become mandatory when our overlords start having award shows for amputees, movies show amputees as heroes, and the media starts running terrifying stories about terrorists who used their thumbs to hold hammers while beating people.