What to do, when two knuckleheads go tweet-2-tweet over healthcare? President Trump trolled the entire UK, on the one thing that unites Labour and Conservative voters, Leave and Remain voters, the blessed socialised health system that is the NHS.
He tweeted: The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!
The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2018
The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt hit back: I may disagree with claims made on that march but not ONE of them wants to live in a system where 28m people have no cover. NHS may have challenges but I’m proud to be from the country that invented universal coverage – where all get care no matter the size of their bank balance.
Boom! He got ya there! It is true that everyone in the UK does get care irrespective of their bank balance, as long as it is not January. Then the ‘care’ suddenly gets cancelled. This is called rationing by bureaucracy and it happens all the time.
In fact, during the quarter ending September 30, 2017, 18,588 operations were cancelled at the last minute for non-clinical reasons by NHS providers. In the same period in 2016/17, there were 19,446 cancelled operations.
Also, hospitals in England cancelled 4,093 urgent procedures during 2016, equivalent to 341 per month. This was 8 per cent more than the 3,777 scrapped in 2015 and up by 27 per cent on the 3,216 such operations cancelled during 2014.
So, if by care you mean having an urgent procedure cancelled, then Jeremy Hunt is bang on the money!
Not that I am defending the American system where heath care is dependent upon health insurance, although it is worth noting that Medicare and Medicaid cover the poorest and older citizens.
Anyway, it is good to see the Tories at one with the socialist Jeremy Corbyn on this one. He believes by simply tweeting ‘Healthcare is a human right’ that, bang, you have the money and resources to build hospitals and train the nurses and surgeons to bring about this promise. Either that or just ‘tax the rich’ who always seem to be there to be taxed whenever Labour or the Tories want to give away stuff.
Finally, I still can’t understand why the Tories oppose rail and utility nationalisation. I mean, if the NHS as a nationalised organisation can give us a health care system that is the ‘envy of the world’, surely a nationalised rail system will give us transport that is the ‘envy of the world’ or similarly an energy system that is the ‘envy of the world.’ I cannot for the life of me figure that one out. Can you?
