Medical Care Under Socialism

Apparently Bernie Sanders, socialist Senator and POTUS wannabe, had a heart attack on the campaign trail but survived after some pretty nifty (and quick) medical care — after which the Commie asshole had the nerve to bellow:  “Medicare For All!” (his campaign slogan).

As Dan Greenfield has pointed out:

While Bernie’s timetable of getting an angioplasty within a day might not sound that impressive to Americans, in the British NHS system, the median time from assessment to treatment is 55.3 days.  Mean times for treatment have been cited as being 80 days.  The maximum NHS waiting time is supposed to be 18 weeks and almost 16% of patients in the UK have to wait more than 3 months for an angioplasty.
Canada’s socialist system has angioplasty waiting times of around 11 weeks.  And that’s after you get an appointment to see a specialist.

Bernie waited a day in Vegas to get his angioplasty.  In Norway, he would have waited 39 days.
In Finland, which Bernie has also cited as an inspiration for his socialist program, he would have waited 22 days.  In Sweden, another favorite of American socialists, Bernie would have waited 42 days.

Greenfield also points out (and I paraphrase) that as President Sanders, the man who would have implemented socialized medical care, Our Bernie wouldn’t ever be subject to the same kinds of waiting periods imposed on others:  oh no.  He’d have been whipped into Bethesda Naval Hospital within the hour, and had an angioplasty a couple hours later.

Which is always the way with Communists:  the ordinary people suffer while the nomenklatura  get only the best.  And under socialism, ordinary individuals’ lives are irrelevant as long as the principle is upheld.

Well, I wish the evil old bastard had croaked, just on principle.

It’s Called “Communism”, Dear

FFS, are these clowns serious?

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said the United States may have to eliminate private car ownership to combat climate change during MSNBC’s climate forum at Georgetown University Thursday morning.
He told MSNBC host Ali Velshi that “we might not own our own cars” by 2050 to wean the United States economy off of fossil fuels, describing private car ownership as “really inefficient and bad for the environment.” Privately owned cars would be replaced by a “constant roving fleet of electric cars.”

Ah yes, it’s all about “efficiency” (a recurring motif for totalitarians) and the environment.  And who will be the actual owner of this “constant roving fleet of electric cars”?  You bet it will be the State, either local government or similar.  (And just try to catch one of these electric Noddy cars to go to a gun show… “Forbidden destination;  please choose another.”)

You have to give it to them:  they’re going Full Lenin on this one.  No private ownership of cars, and — duh — no private ownership of guns.  And by the time they’ve implemented inflicted their third Five Year Plan on our economy, nobody* will be able to afford their own house, so we’ll all be living in State-owned apartments.

And Yang is supposed to be one of the moderate clowns?

This isn’t serious public policy;  this is middle-school daydreaming — right up until one of these socialist assholes gets his/her/xeir hands on the levers of power, when blue-sky unicorn-fart dreaming will become the law of the land.

And then the joke will be on the rest of us.


*nobody except the nomenklatura, of course — they’ll still own houses, cars (and probably guns too).

 

News Roundup

…wherein I couldn’t be bothered to post anything more than a one-line comment.

1)  Stanford pushes separate physics course for minority students — the problem won’t be finding “minority” students for these classes — I fully expect them to be dumbed down to 10th-grade level so as to pass as many as possible– but I’m more interested in where Stanford will find the minority lecturers to teach  them.  (Also:  which  minorities?  Can we insist that Physics For Minorities 1.0 must include Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian and Jewish students instead of just the stupid  minorities?)

2)  Global Warming High Priest Loses Court Case — He refused to reveal his “source” data because it was all invented and he knew that it wouldn’t even stand up to scrutiny by a freshman Statistics class.  Quelle surprise.

3)  BritPM Politely Tells The EU To Eff Off — this after hearing that the U.S. will give them a quick, yuge and profitable trade deal.  In essence, Boris said “No deal?  No exit fee.”  (The EU will have difficulty staying together without Britishland’s annual contribution, which is why they’re trying to stop Brexit, as any fule kno.)

4)  Joe Walsh Announces Presidential Run — Hey, he warned us that he would, many years ago.

Couldn’t do much worse than any of the Socialist candidates, IMO.

5)  Lefties Start Turning Towards Violence — …and Kim buys more ammo and goes to the range.  (Incidentally, when I took the Browning High Wall .45-70 Govt to the indoor range a couple days back, I told the nervous young clerk that the bullet wouldn’t go through  the back wall, but it might push it over.  Only the laughter from the older guys stopped him from doing something silly.)

Naïveté On Display

At some highbrow website or other, the question is asked:

Why Isn’t AOC Taking Blame For Violent Attacks On ICE?

Seriously?

FFS:  the Communists haven’t yet taken the blame for the policies which killed millions of Ukranians in the famine of the 1930s — what makes you think they’re going to accept blame for their inflammatory speech now?

Chinks In The Armor

As much as the ChiComs claim to be a global economic powerhouse, we should always be aware that much of the economic numbers that come out of China are either flat-out lies or at best, exaggerations.  Hence:

The most important thing to understand about Chinese statistics is not that they are necessarily manipulated from the top. Certainly that happens too, as it does in every country in the world. Look no further than Wang’s example for that. But much of the manipulation of Chinese data actually comes from the lower levels. China is a country of over a billion people, but it has no unified or centralized statistical reporting system. Data is gathered at the local level and passed up the chain until it reaches the central government. The bureaucrats in charge of that system enjoy professional success and advancement when their numbers conform to the expectations and directives of the party. As a result, the numbers can be inflated to give the impression of success or moderated in order to avoid attention.

An example of how this can lead to catastrophe comes out of China itself, in the not-so-distant past:

In the 1958-1961 Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao’s disastrous attempt to shift a backward agrarian economy to a modern industrial powerhouse, the failure of the statistical system contributed to catastrophe on a grand scale. Mao’s plan, such as it was, required producing an agricultural surplus that could be sold to fund investment in a modern industrial base. Whipped into a patriotic frenzy, and knowing that their future depended on meeting unrealistic targets for the production of grain, local officials engaged in rampant exaggeration of output.
But reality was distorted at a cost. The higher the production figures, the greater the tax owed to the central government. In some areas, the exaggerated claims were so great that the entire harvest had to be handed over as tax, used to fund investments and extravagances that China could ill afford. In some parts of the country, the only crops left behind were grown by villagers in secret locations, away from the acquisitive eye of the local production teams. But such success stories were few and far between. Tens of millions died in history’s greatest man-made famine.

Communists are renowned, of course, for perverting the facts to suit their own ends.  Remember this over the coming political election season here in the U.S., as our own home-grown Marxists fabricate lies and misquote or otherwise falsify data, simply to advance their political agenda.

Stubborn Things

Everyone laughed when perennial loser / has-been VP Joe Biden stated that Democrats “choose truth over facts”, passing it off as just another one of Joe’s (many) cock-ups.

I didn’t laugh, and it wasn’t a cock-up:  it was said in dead earnest.

You see, that’s exactly how the Left operates:  facts are irrelevant unless they support the Party’s “truth” (or “higher truth”, as they disingenuously frame it).  It’s entirely congruent, for example, with the “Fake But Accurate” defense used by people like Dan Rather (falsifying documents to advance a political position).

The old joke is that if the facts don’t conform to the theory, they must be eliminated.  What the Left does is not just eliminate the contrary facts, they also set out to discredit and destroy the people who stand behind those facts.

It’s not a joke, and Biden is no laughing matter.  He’s no less dangerous than all the other Marxists running for office.