BRITAIN REBUTS REPUBLICAN B.S. REGARDING HEALTH CARE

FROM HUFF PO:
LONDON — Britain's health care service says it is sick of being lied about.
Pilloried by right-wing critics of President Barack Obama's health care plan, Britain's National Health Service, known here as the NHS, is fighting back.

"People have been saying some untruths in the States," a spokesman for Britain Department of Health said in a telephone interview. "There's been all these ridiculous claims made by the American health lobby about Obama's health care plan ... and they've used the NHS as an example. A lot of it has been untrue."

He spoke anonymously in line with department policy.

A particularly outlandish example of a U.S. editorial, printed in the Investor's Business Daily, claimed that renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who is disabled, "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."
Hawking, who was born and lives in Britain, personally debunked the claim. "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told The Guardian newspaper. Investor's Business Daily has since corrected the editorial.

As the debate over how best to look after American patients rages on, Britain's socialized health care system has increasingly found itself being drawn into the argument. Critics of the Obama administration's plan to overhaul US health care say the president is seeking to model the U.S. system on that of Britain or Canada – places they paint as countries where patients linger for months on waiting lists and are forbidden from paying for their own medication.

A Republican National Committee ad said that in the U.K. "individuals lose their right to make their own health care choices." Another ad launched earlier this month by the anti-tax group Club for Growth claimed that government bureaucrats in Britain had calculated six months of life to be worth $22,750. "Under their socialized system, if your treatment costs more, you're out of luck," the ad says, as footage of an elderly man weeping at a woman's bedside alternate with clips of the Union Jack and Big Ben.

The online attacks on Britain's health care system have been paired with strident criticism from Republican lawmakers.

In an interview widely interpreted here as an attack on the U.K., Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa told a local radio station last week that "countries that have government-run health care" would not have given Sen. Edward Kennedy, who suffers from a brain tumor, the same standard of care as in the U.S. because he is too old. Another Republican, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia, said that the U.K. and Canada "don't have the appreciation of life as we do in our society, evidently."

The criticism, widely covered in the U.K. media, has clearly stung Britain's left-leaning Labour government. The Department of Health took the unusual step of contacting The Associated Press and e-mailing it a three-page rebuttal to what it said were misconceptions about the NHS being bandied about in the U.S. media – each one followed with the words: "Not true."

At the top of the list was the idea that a patient in his late 70s would not be treated for a brain tumor because he was too old – a transparent reference to Grassley's comments about Kennedy.
And what of Republicans' claim that British patients are robbed of their medical choices? False again, the department said.

"Everyone who is cared for by the NHS in England has formal rights to make choices about the service that they receive," it said in its rebuttal.
Then followed a fact sheet comparing selected statistics such as health spending per capita, infant mortality, life expectancy, and more. Each one showed England outperforming its trans-Atlantic counterpart.

The British government offers health care for free at the point of need, a service pioneered by Labour in 1948. In the six decades since, its promise of universal medical care, from cradle to grave, is taken for granted by Britons to such an extent that politicians – even fiscal conservatives – are loath to attack it.

But the NHS faces significant challenges, not least a multibillion pound (dollar) deficit predicted to open up over the next five years. It has its critics too, particularly cancer patients who complain that the government refuses to cover costlier drugs, leaving those who need expensive treatments to pay for them out of pocket.

Nevertheless, many in the British press bristled at the criticism from America's right wing.
"How dare the Republicans bad-mouth our free health care system?" Guardian columnist Michele Hanson wrote Wednesday. "If I'd been born in the U.S., I'd probably be dead by now."

Good for them, it's about time people start refuting the right wing.

Peace-

OBAMA IN EUROPE, EUROPEANS SWOON

I've been watching the news lately, big surprise, and I've been paying attention to the G20 summit it London. The G20 is the group of the 20 most powerful economies in the world coming together to yap at each other, form policy, etc.


And, the protesters are out in force, in London protesters have been smashing windows in banks, trying to set fire to banks, etc. In France, and I love this, pissed off workers are taking their supervisors and managers hostage in factories because they are sick of getting screwed as workers while management makes the big bucks. Enough is enough! Ya basta!

I watched video of some of the hostage takers, and they are average normal people. When one of the managers was released to freedom after 24 hours as a hostage, he was released to boos and catcalls.


Can you imagine the overreaction of the American police if workers did that here? They would kill people.


Another thing I noticed about the protesters in England. For all of the thousands and thousands of people that hit the streets, I did not see a single effigy of the United States President burned.

Not one. The anger was rightly directed at bankers, insurance execs, and the wretched idea of failed American capitalism.


Not one time was Obama hanged in effigy (that just happens here in the U.S.) or burned in effigy. As a child of the 70's and 80's this is almost unheard of. When Reagan went to Europe it was on. Same with the Bushes. (somebody really should have shaved that Bush a long time ago...)


So today the Obamas are in France and Germany. Obama's crazy ass even had a town hall meeting in Strasbourg, France. They absolutely love him over there.

From a personal standpoint, as a citizen of the United States, it is very refreshing to not see the rest of the world want to kill everyone in the US because of our hateful policies.

Face it, Americans, we have a shitty reputation in the rest of the world because of our arrogance and policies, period. Latin America and South America still have not gotten over the Reagan years, rightly so.

I'm glad we elected Obama, at least he has the good sense to keep his fucking hands off of the Chancellor of Germany:



Scary image, huh? The United States elected this doofus. Twice...CRINGE!


BTW, I am beginning to like Sarkozy of France, that's him in the top pic with Obama, largely because he favors tough regulations for the banking and insurance companies, to ensure this doesn't happen again. He is for an international body to oversee regulations in every country, even (especially) the United States. I am down with that.
I am no longer under the illusion of the "God-Given Greatness Of The United States."

A nation that rapes continents and performs forced hysterectomies on poor and Native Women is not deserving of my respect, and my children are being raised in the full knowledge of what their government has done in the past. Rectify and heal the past United States, then maybe you can be allowed a shred of respect...we'll see.
Onward!