Saturday, March 13, 2010

Quangos try to kill you.

You may have heard about a controversial healthcare plan lurching its way through the U.S. Congress? 

Well, go here for more enlightenment.  "Middle Aged Dad", a British guy who commented on some of my earlier posts about Obamacare, is a little pissed.  (His message to us is "Run for your lives, while you still can ! The Quangos are gonna get you !  Run, for God's sake !  It's THE QUANGOS !") 

A Quango is a British derogatory term for any group financed by the government that is not actually part of the government.  [qua(si) n(on-)g(overnmental) o(rganization).]  We'll soon be calling our insurance companies Quangos.  General Motors is now a Quango.  Archer Daniels Midland might as well be a Quango.  Noted con artist Al Gore wanted to be a Quango, but I think we may have prevented it. 

"Middle Aged Dad's" post on his miserable experience with Socialized Medicine had a comment from someone who runs the National Death Service blog.  (Get it?  Get it? In England their Obamacare program is called The National Health Service?  Like, if we implement Obamacare over here, it'll be truly screwed up beyond recognition, and then we'll nickname Obamacare after someone or something that's totally screwed up?  Oh.  Wait.  We've already done it.  Maybe someone can think of something worse.) 
Anyway, if you have any warm and fuzzy feelings about socialized medicine, go to the National Death Service blog, and hit a few random posts. 

Middle Aged Dad has a fairly limited blogroll, but among the honorees is someone named Mark Wadsworth, who declares that "England Is Not A Museum".   Mr. Wadsworth is running an online poll about the Keynesian mulitiplier effect.  There is only one correct answer, and that would be number 3.  Go there.  Take the test.  Hit option 3. 

Happy Saturday morning to everyone.  I'm through surfing for the day.  Gotta go to work.

Ok, I lied.  I was looking for a funny picture to illustrate Britain's National Health Service fiasco, and came across this poster.  This is a serious poster.  It was designed by non-comedians, who weren't trying to be funny. 


1)  Just how pissed off are the Brits, if they have to put up posters warning against abuse of National Death Service staff? 
2)  Go here for the blog post where I found the poster.  If you don't have time for that, just note the multi-culti "We Are The World" NHS staff, as compared to the nasty, ethnocentric colonial masters and warlords on the right. 

Christ almighty, we're in trouble. 

6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Thanks for the links to my blog and NationalDeathService.

Anonymous said...

We British people like our National Health Service. Healthcare here costs less than in the US and our life expectancy is longer. Rule, Britannia!

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Anon,
That's been a minority opinion among my commenters.

Anonymous said...

Then we have to conclude that your commentators are extremely unrepresentative of the British people, won't we? No serious UK political party is anti-NHS (even Mrs Thatcher couldn't touch it) and the current Conservative policy is to ring fence health spending for the NHS. And, let's not forget Mark Wadsworth is a member of UKIP - which in the 2005 general election managed to secure a massive 2.2% of the national vote, and in the election before in 2001 got a huge 1.5%.

Your contributors are in no way representative of what the British people think, so don't make the mistake that they are! They are very much on the fringe.

Them's the facts, I'm afraid!

Hot Sam said...

We have similar warnings on San Francisco buses, at the information booths for BART, and at the California DMV.

The reason so many municipal workers get threats and are assaulted is because they are lazy, overpaid, job-entitled, obnoxious @$$^0!_3$! They also enforce the insane tax, fee, and regulatory policies of the politicians.

@Anonymous:

Thanks for beating up that straw man again. Life expectancy is a function of genetics and lifestyle choices, NOT the quality of health care.

Survivability for medical conditions is an adequate measure of health care quality and the US leads the world in most measures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other treatable illnesses and injuries.

Health care costs in England are lower because the quality stinks, availability is poor, care is rationed, services are congested, and lines are long.

The fact that no political party is against NHS is evidence of the pernicious and insidious quality of being unable to claw back these God-forsaken socialist programs once the entitled underclasses and unions get their clutches on them.

It's all the more reason NOT to start such a system here.

The British People said...

Wow. You people are insane. Please can you take Daniel Hannan and Mark Wadsworth with you and let the rest of us just get on with our nice lives which are infinitely better with our "socialised" healthcare, which costs us less and helps us live longer.