The Politics of Healthcare
I really can’t add anything to Don Surber’s observations, other than to say that somehow I don’t think we’ll learn from the mistakes we made pillorying politicians who didn’t toe the AIDS funding line.
Question: What lesson does AIDS teach us about the dangers of government-run health care?
Answer: The politicization of health. AIDS was peddled as being able to happen to anyone, when in fact it was transmitted mainly via male homosexual sex. Anyone who dared challenge that was branded a “homophobe” and merrily sent on his way. The Independent reported on Monday: “A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organization has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.”
We also know that embryonic stem cell research is not going to make Michael J. Fox all better and that with a 90% 5-year survival rate for breast cancer in the USA (lower in Britain and other government-run health countries) women would be far better served with pink ribbon money going to lung cancer, which has less than a 20% 5-year survival rate.
But politically correct diseases will get the research money. Sickle cell anemia, yes. The heart disease that actually is the No. 1 killer of black people, no.
Technorati Tags: AIDS, health care
Filed under: Medicine • Politics
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