HoodaThunk?

Captain Ed Morrissey over at Captain’s Quarters has a post up this morning referring to this story at the Telegraph in the UK. Doctors and other decision-makers tied with the National Health Service in the UK are saying that there should be restrictions on treatment to people who are, “[s]mokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly”. While there are those who might see some rationale for refusing to cover certain procedures made necessary by a person’s decision to start smoking, I don’t think the suggestion that someone shouldn’t get medical treatment because they’re too old is going to get many supporters. As Ed says:

Do you want government to tell you that your mother or father are simply too old to matter anymore? Would you like to have that happen in a system where either the private care choices are out of reach because the government has removed all of the private insurers from the market, or they don’t exist, as in Canada?

I certainly don’t. The point is, this is precisely where government-run healthcare leads to. There might be a way to hold off reaching this point, but that way usually involves raising taxes to outrageous levels (75%, anyone?) in order to keep paying for the services. It might take a few years to get there in America, but it’ll come eventually.

I am reminded of Joe Halderman’s book, The Forever War. In it, the key character, Mandella,  is a soldier in an interstellar war which is made possible through a time-dilation method of travel – the soldiers perceive time as a matter of days where, outside of their ship, decades or centuries can pass. Upon returning home that first time, he finds his own mother seriously ill. Contacting the local medical authorities, he’s told she basically doesn’t qualify for medical assistance, forcing Mandella to try to acquire the necessary drugs and gear via the black market. There’s been a lot of science fiction that never has broken into reality, but there’s a lot that has. This one will, if we permit it.