TO THE GRAVE
5 February 2005
When the NHS and the Welfare State were created, the promise was that people would be cared for from the cradle to the grave. What they did not imagine, having paid a lifetime’s worth of tax and national insurance contributions, is that if they got old and lingered a bit, that they might be pushed into the grave in order to save money.
Yet this is increasingly the line being taken by Labour.
Not satisfied with advocating living wills, they are now arguing in the Court of Appeal that the government should be allowed to withhold medical attention as the costs of keeping patients alive is too high. This view is set out in papers filed on behalf of John Reid, the Health Secretary.
Of course, John Reid, being Scottish, is only pronouncing on what is fit for the English. Scotland controls its own Health Service and has far better funding.
It is a case of “I’m all right, Jock”.
John Reid’s papers set out the government’s view that there are economic arguments for allowing people to die.
Can one imagine the uproar that there would have been had a Conservative government advocated such a policy? The ex-communist John Reid would have been up in arms over such proposals, along with the rest of phoney Tony’s jamboree.
This episode only reinforces the view that the only way for ordinary people to safeguard themselves is to denationalise the NHS, and to denationalise the family.
When the NHS and the Welfare State were created, the promise was that people would be cared for from the cradle to the grave. What they did not imagine, having paid a lifetime’s worth of tax and national insurance contributions, is that if they got old and lingered a bit, that they might be pushed into the grave in order to save money.
Yet this is increasingly the line being taken by Labour.
Not satisfied with advocating living wills, they are now arguing in the Court of Appeal that the government should be allowed to withhold medical attention as the costs of keeping patients alive is too high. This view is set out in papers filed on behalf of John Reid, the Health Secretary.
Of course, John Reid, being Scottish, is only pronouncing on what is fit for the English. Scotland controls its own Health Service and has far better funding.
It is a case of “I’m all right, Jock”.
John Reid’s papers set out the government’s view that there are economic arguments for allowing people to die.
Can one imagine the uproar that there would have been had a Conservative government advocated such a policy? The ex-communist John Reid would have been up in arms over such proposals, along with the rest of phoney Tony’s jamboree.
This episode only reinforces the view that the only way for ordinary people to safeguard themselves is to denationalise the NHS, and to denationalise the family.
posted by erc @ 5:18 pm
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