Quote :

"Rosalind Figg had removed her 86-year-old mother Betty, who has dementia, from the care home she had lived in since August. She hoped to look after her at her own house in Coventry and spent months adapting it for her needs, creating a downstairs bedroom complete with an alarm that would go off if she got up in the night and wheelchair ramps outside. ... Mrs Figg was taken from her daughter's house in a wheelchair and is now back in her room at Butts Croft House, which costs her family £2,000 a month. ... She said: "She was sitting there like a cabbage, there was no interaction and she wasn't doing anything. "You could see in two days living with me how much better she was." Staff at the care home in Corley, Coventry, refused to comment and its owner was unavailable. ... Colin Green, director of community services at Coventry City Council, said the local authority, in conjunction with the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust, invoked its powers under the Mental Health Act to obtain a warrant to take Mrs Figg back into care. Social services decided she needed to be in a specialist home because they were concerned that the high level of care she required might not be met by her daughter and her partner. He said: "If someone needs caring for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we have to look at what additional support is there and whether one person can realistically offer that level of care. ... "We were never satisfied that it was in Mrs Figg's best interests to live with her daughter.""

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/5208527/Daughter-considers-legal-action-after-social-services-force-mother-into-care-home.html

Quote :

"So in a spirited fit of pique, not uncommon in a 95-year-old, Rosemary simply decided one day that she wasn't going to open the door to the care assistants who had been calling daily while Bernadine, who lived nearby, and helped look after her mother, spent a much-needed week on holiday in Egypt. Irritated by another visit, Rosemary shouted from the window that she was fine and didn't need any help that day. ''I was standing in the middle of the Sinai desert at the time, marvelling at the stillness, when suddenly my mobile rang,'' Bernadine recalls. ''An extremely cross woman from social services yelled: 'Why aren't you with your mother?' '' ... While she was being harangued and accused of ignoring calls from the carers to say they couldn't get in – calls that had never been made, a lie for which social services later apologised – two police cars and an ambulance were rolling up at her mother's Southend-on-Sea home to take her to hospital. ... ''Even though I lived a few doors away and Mum was easily able to look after herself with family support, they wouldn't give in. They held meetings without me and even spoke to the owners of a local care home to find her a place. When I told them there was no way she was going anywhere without my approval, they overruled me and tried to push it through. ''All they were ever concerned about was how much her home was worth and how much she had in savings. They wouldn't countenance home care – they would have had to pay for that. They insisted she should be in a home even though I said I would sleep in her house every night. ... But help may be at hand for the families who feel they are denied a say in the care of their elderly relatives. One couple, Jill and Steven (not their real names, which cannot be used for legal reasons), who won a legal battle to keep an autistic relative with them, will this weekend speak to those who have found themselves in a similar situation in the hope that they can use the forthcoming Deprivation of Liberty guidelines to ensure elderly parents are not put into nursing homes against their wishes and those of their family. Twelve years ago the couple, who cared for a young autistic man known only as HL, obtained a court ruling that he had been ''detained unlawfully'' at Bournewood long-stay hospital after he was removed from their home. He had been taken there simply because he had been disruptive on a bus. Although the ruling was overturned a year later, the couple took their case to the European Court of Human Rights five years ago and won what is now known as the Bournewood Judgment. ... 'We were stunned when we saw the footage of Mrs Figg being forcibly taken from her daughter's home, and without her daughter's consent,'' says Steven. ''It was almost a carbon copy of what we went through with HL. He was dumped in a secure unit and we were not even allowed to see him. When we finally won the right to have him home, we were shocked at his condition. He had deteriorated – physically and emotionally – so badly. But within months of being back with us he had regained his confidence. He's such a happy chap now. In fact, right now he is lying on his bed, watching the sun stream through his window and listening to Handel on his CD player.'' ... Jim Jones, 44, from Bellerby, North Yorkshire, knows exactly the sort of pressure Bernadine had to endure. His father, Ron, 76, who lived with him, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's a year ago. ''Of course I knew that, eventually, when it became really bad, Dad would have to go to a nursing home,'' Jim says. ''But even now he is nowhere near that situation and has responded well to medication. But I am fighting an uphill battle to keep him in his own home with me. "And, frankly, I am at my wit's end. I have been shocked at how swiftly, once social services become involved, one is raced down the nursing home route. I feel so guilty. I feel I have sleep-walked into a situation where they have taken over the role of being my father's kin. Stolen it from me.'' ... As the weeks progressed, Ron became more and more morose until, eventually, Jim took him home. Before long, social services were back. ''No one forced me into anything but the clear implication was that if I didn't take Dad back soon, the place would have gone and I would have lost any future opportunity to have him placed in a nursing home. That seemed fine at face value, but obviously I know Dad won't be as well as he is now in later life. His condition will only worsen.'' Ron was returned to the nursing home but, when he became aggressive because he wanted to go home, he was moved to a care unit for the elderly. ''There, they changed his medication, and all the aggression disappeared,'' Jim says. ''He has been there for a month now and I have had to hire a solicitor to help me get him back. But basically, I am in despair. ''The local authority say he can't have any day care - for which they would have to pay -and insist he must go to a nursing home. I feel so guilty, I feel I have let him down."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/5262744/Care-homes-no-way-to-treat-the-elderly.html

Quote :

"Social workers swooped on Rosalind’s Keresley home with police and a battering ram after accusing her of abducting grandmother Betty from a care home. ... [Rosalind] A FORMER hospital worker from Coventry has vowed to keep fighting for the right to look after her own elderly mother. ... Rosalind and her partner Michael say they applied for permission to take her home in November and claim to have been given a list of recommendations to meet so Betty could safely live with them. They have spent months adapting their house to meet her needs. This includes installing wheelchair ramps and converting their den into a downstairs bedroom with an en-suite toilet and shower. Rosalind also gave up running her own business, The Pottery Shop in the City Arcade, Coventry, in order to care for her mother full time. ... A spokesperson from Coventry City Council said: “Staff from a number of agencies are involved in safeguarding Mrs Figg including using statutory powers to protect her against further moves and to provide a mental health assessment after she was removed from a residential care home by her daughter against advice from the Older Peoples Community Mental Health Unit, which includes representatives from health agencies and social care."

http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/2009/04/23/keresley-family-set-for-legal-battle-to-get-gran-home-92746-23453377/3/


You will do what the state says, it's for the good of the state your own good.

Its funny how in the 90's I remember hearing about how awful HMOs were and about how insane it was that some organization would dare to presume what was best when it came to the health of you and yours, but so many people seem so willing to give that same power to the government. A move that our friends across the pond demonstrate will clearly result in something far worse than an HMO.

5/9/2009 11:58:27 AM

Quote :

"A move that our friends across the pond demonstrate will clearly result in something far worse than an HMO."

because the only option is between our current clusterfuck and big brother taking your family members away from you.

5/9/2009 12:03:38 PM

Of course not. At first, we'll pick something in the middle, some sort of band aid that makes the system we have right now worse than it is while making the system we chose better than what we see elsewhere. Then when the inevitable failings occur, as they will without a doubt, we will hear the gnashing of teeth and the cries of "think of the children, think of the elderly, think of the poor". And the answer to those cries will be to give the government more power to "correct" these failings. And there will of course be railing against that, about how it slips us further to the brink of somewhere we don't want to go. Those who oppose the changes and increase in power will point out new, more grievous examples from overseas, much as I have done today. And they will be answered with the same "because the only option is between our current clusterfuck and big brother doing X." And those that answer, much like you, will fail to realize that those who oppose the change (much like me) are not content with the current system, but do not see the move towards a socialized system as the answer to our problems. But since the debate is always framed in terms of "the cluster fuck of now" or socialized care, we will always slip towards socialized care.

I have no doubts about our abilities to create a system that is somewhere between us and the brits, I have every doubt in the world about us being able to keep it there, or that such as system will even be better than what we have now. We have never been able to keep our government's powers in check, I see no reason to believe that such a trend will not continue.

5/9/2009 12:23:46 PM

Hahaha nice job Nostradamus.

5/9/2009 12:24:50 PM

I think more than half of the threads this douche bag creates are about shit the UK is fucking up, not even realizing he is going to be returned to dirt by the time a socialist nirvana like that happens here. It's a waste of everyone's time that posts here.

5/9/2009 1:55:30 PM

good thing our Capitalist-utopia insurance system cover's everybody's needs, no questions asked, doesn't "ration care" or let anyone or anyone's problems fall through the cracks

5/9/2009 2:51:57 PM

^Just because the system we have now is terrible doesn't make every possible alternative better. Some ideas are better than others. Universal healthcare at this point in time would be an absolute disaster, and many people will agree. We simply don't have the money to fund something like that. If it were to come, it would have to come years later after many reforms, and after the budget is under control.

Should anyone in America have to die because they couldn't get adequate healthcare? I'd like to say no. There are children out there in very poor health, simply because their parents don't have the means to provide. There are other [less] poor people that have diseases which cannot be treated for less than hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fact is, medical care has real value, and I'm not sure that there can ever be a system where every individual is given access to top quality care. I wish I knew of a viable solution, but I don't.

[Edited on May 9, 2009 at 3:30 PM. Reason : ]

5/9/2009 3:30:03 PM

^^I'm pretty sure you realize this and it is part of a layer of sarcasm in that post, but what we have now isn't even remotely close to being pure capitalist. It's not really even impure capitalism.

More like the unholy mutant child of capitalism and poorly-done regulation.

[Edited on May 9, 2009 at 3:31 PM. Reason : .]

5/9/2009 3:31:36 PM

We dont have a capitalist utopia system. We have a system thats been fucked by the government thanks to massive lobbying by the HMOs.

5/9/2009 3:33:13 PM

socialization of risk + bueracracy = high healthcare costs.

5/9/2009 3:36:34 PM

^x6 And yet you continue to post...

Of course, they would have said the same thing 100 years ago had you said that income tax would eventually account for a third of the income of the average american, or that they would actually pass a law authorizing the government to wiretap anyone, or that the government would actually consider borrowing billions of dollars to buy bad investments from failed companies. I imagine they didn't imagine then either that you would live in a world where your neighbors could dictate the color of your house, or that you could be sent to jail for owning a small amount of a naturally growing plant. Hell, it wasn't that long ago that you going to school with both black and white children would have been unthinkable. And if even 30 years ago you said that soon any household in america would be able to download entire movies from one end of the world to the other in less time than it takes to bake a potato with less than $300 worth of equipment, you would have been laughed at. I wonder, if you had told the brits in the 1980's that by 2010 they would be fighting the government to keep them from forcibly taking their elderly family members from their homes and putting them in group housing, if you would have been laughed at.

So preach all you want, but to say that the face of this country can't change very rapidly is to ignore countless centuries of human history all to assure yourself that you aren't making the same mistakes your forefathers made.

^x5
As I said, I'm not satisfied with our current system, but our options are not the current system or socialized medicine, and your attempts to frame the argument and fit my opinions into your nicely preconceived notions are not relevant to the topic at hand. This is about the state forcing people who are able and willing to provide care for their families being forced without due process to surrender their rights and responsibilities to their families in the name of the state. You can ignore it all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that such outcomes are the guaranteed result of giving control of your life decisions to another body and in particular to your government.

[Edited on May 9, 2009 at 3:45 PM. Reason : sadf]

5/9/2009 3:42:34 PM

I really, really, don't understand why people want a government run healthcare system. Have you never interacted with the state or federal government? Seriously? You have almost no power to fight back and you have no say or choice once some petty bureaucrat or lame government worker decides for you.

5/9/2009 4:08:34 PM

Quote :

"Seriously? You have almost no power to fight back and you have no say or choice once some petty bureaucrat or lame government worker decides for you."

kind of like, oh..... when an insurance company decides not to cover a procedure you're clearly entitled to, or they claim pre-existing condition at the drop of a hat? Yeah, it's real easy to get through to them. Of course, if you do decide to battle an insurance company, there's a good chance someone will write a book or make a movie about you, which you can use to pay for your problem (assuming you live).

5/9/2009 4:59:25 PM

Quote :

"Of course, if you do decide to battle an insurance company, there's a good chance someone will write a book or make a movie about you, which you can use to pay for your problem (assuming you live)."

You left at the slimy lawyer that got rich part of the story. One can only hope that if you get fucked by the insurance, its royally enough that you get some pro bono support, because if they only fuck you a little, then you're either up shit creek or will get fucked again when you have to pay half your judgment to the sleeze you hired to help.

Quote :

"So preach all you want, but to say that the face of this country can't change very rapidly is to ignore countless centuries of human history all to assure yourself that you aren't making the same mistakes your forefathers made."

It's just a stupid waste of time to use the UK as launching points for discussion of things you fear might happen in the near future in this country when you have yet to show any sort of basis that it will. You've been crying about socialized medicine for what seems like a year now while ignoring the rampant pace of landmark legislation approved in DC in the past couple of decades. The shit isn't changing any time soon.

5/9/2009 5:26:26 PM

Quote :

"It's just a stupid waste of time to use the UK as launching points for discussion of things you fear might happen in the near future in this country when you have yet to show any sort of basis that it will. You've been crying about socialized medicine for what seems like a year now while ignoring the rampant pace of landmark legislation approved in DC in the past couple of decades. The shit isn't changing any time soon."

So it's a waste of time to use the closest analogue to our country to demonstrate what might happen in this country should we choose to pursue policies which are similar to those already in place in that country? If me pointing to the failures of policies in other countries is no basis for assuming we will see the same failures here, then how is you pointing to any of their successes a basis for assuming we will have the same success here? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Further I'm not so sure what the hell you're talking about in your last few sentences. You're saying I've been concerned about the direction our policies are taking us for what seems like a year (clearly you haven't been paying attention) but I'm ignoring the rampant pace of change in the legislation of the last few decades, but there isn't any change coming? Or are you suggesting that my warnings and concerns about the paths we're taking are futile because we're going that way whether I like it or not and I should just STFU like a good little subject?

5/9/2009 5:46:39 PM

OK I didn't read all 300 pages of that post, but I get the idea that this is a civil liberties problem; not a problem with the way health-care is paid for.

5/9/2009 5:59:27 PM

Quote :

"So it's a waste of time to use the closest analogue to our country to demonstrate what might happen in this country should we choose to pursue policies which are similar to those already in place in that country?"

The UK is our "closest analogue" in what respect....? Culturally, or in healthcare policy? To the former, I would say "so what", and to the latter I would say "yeah, right".

Comparing what may come of the US in the near-term to what the UK has now is ridiculous because we're not starting from scratch. We already have a semi-functioning private insurance system, where a lot of people are relatively happy or well insured. The existing system needs reform, no doubt, but nobody is suggesting we just scrap the whole thing. The likely course of action for any kind of gov't healthcare will be to fill in the gaps that aren't being served by the private system. The goal should be to have "universal coverage", but that doesn't mean everybody is covered by the government. Ideally, we will have a good mix of private, employer-sponsored, and government-sponsored coverage.

5/9/2009 6:16:52 PM

Quote :

"The goal should be to have "universal coverage", but that doesn't mean everybody is covered by the government. Ideally, we will have a good mix of private, employer-sponsored, and government-sponsored coverage."

Ideally is the operative word. The plan set forth by the current administration and backed by many congressional democrats will almost certainly crowd out most private insurers. Many have posted on this and I have yet to see a logical response why it is unlikely.

Quote :

"kind of like, oh..... when an insurance company decides not to cover a procedure you're clearly entitled to, or they claim pre-existing condition at the drop of a hat?"

Do you have any data on the prevalence of this or are you extrapolating from a few sensationalized movies?

[Edited on May 9, 2009 at 6:41 PM. Reason : ,]

5/9/2009 6:40:50 PM

no, i'm not extrapolating from movies, but it's not hard to find how unhappy people are with their insurance companies, or company policies that are to deny any claim over $X on the first go-round.

5/9/2009 6:58:02 PM

Quote :

"So it's a waste of time to use the closest analogue to our country to demonstrate what might happen in this country should we choose to pursue policies which are similar to those already in place in that country?"

Just wanting you to show how we are on the same path as our so called closest analogue. The mother country hasn't been shit for a century, and certainly since Hitler stuck it in them, to compare us to them, or what our leaders and citizens will demand and stand for is probably the dumbest fucking shit I have ever seen.

Quote :

" Do you have any data on the prevalence of this or are you extrapolating from a few sensationalized movies?"

I most certainly got a note from my new insurance provider saying they wouldn't cover any sort of conditions I was being treated for and covered by under my last provider in the past 6 months. Does this make any sense? Of course it does when private institutions are out to profit on my health.

I (and my wife) could have stayed with my old provider to the tune of $500 a month. Now how the hell am I supposed to calculate how much low back pain I can put up with versus how much I want to pay for the treatments for it? Under national health care, this concern goes away.

[Edited on May 9, 2009 at 7:13 PM. Reason : .]

5/9/2009 7:06:59 PM

Quote :

"Of course it does when private institutions are out to profit on my health."

Because the government would never pull the same kind of shenanigans for the sake of cost-cutting. Walter Reed? Never happened.

Seriously, do you ever step back to listen yourself before going off on how ridiculous everyone else sounds?

5/9/2009 10:00:49 PM

Quote :

"calculate how much low back pain I can put up with versus how much I want to pay for the treatments for it? Under national health care, this concern goes away. "

Yes but now you have to calculate how long you can go with the pain, while you wait for your gov't doctor appointment. Also calculate how old you are, because once you hit 65 or so, the state has little use in keeping you healthy. And since the gov't pharmacy ran out of your price-fixed pain medicine, you might want to calculate how much it will cost you on the black market.

5/9/2009 10:20:01 PM

Quote :

"Ideally is the operative word. The plan set forth by the current administration and backed by many congressional democrats will almost certainly crowd out most private insurers."

Exactly. Try to find someone over 65 who is NOT on medicare.

5/9/2009 10:29:06 PM

Quote :

"Also calculate how old you are, because once you hit 65 or so, the state has little use in keeping you healthy."

uhhh, see ^

5/9/2009 10:35:20 PM

Quote :

"OK I didn't read all 300 pages of that post, but I get the idea that this is a civil liberties problem; not a problem with the way health-care is paid for."

Yeah, cause 3 news articles providing a complete picture (for example, I provided the third because I went looking to see if there was any details on how qualified this woman might be to care for her mother) is such a difficult task. But you're wrong, its bother a civil liberties and a health care payment problem. One of the fundamental truths of life is that he who holds the purse strings sets the rules. Even our founding fathers knew this and hence gave the budget to congress and not the president. What we have here is a country who gave the purse strings to their health care to the government, and are now finding their basic rights to control their health care being taken from them because they no longer have that control.

Quote :

"The UK is our "closest analogue" in what respect....? Culturally, or in healthcare policy? To the former, I would say "so what", and to the latter I would say "yeah, right". "

Do you have another country you suggest would be better to use when looking to see what the possible effects of a proposed idea might be?

Quote :

"We already have a semi-functioning private insurance system, where a lot of people are relatively happy or well insured. The existing system needs reform, no doubt, but nobody is suggesting we just scrap the whole thing. The likely course of action for any kind of gov't healthcare will be to fill in the gaps that aren't being served by the private system."

And this is precisely one of the problems, we will wind up with the worst of both systems because we will half ass the whole process.

Quote :

"The goal should be to have "universal coverage", but that doesn't mean everybody is covered by the government. Ideally, we will have a good mix of private, employer-sponsored, and government-sponsored coverage."

And when the government starts subsidizing care and providing it for people who don't have it, what incentives do you see for businesses to continue to fund employee plans? What incentives do insurance companies have to provide plans other than "supplemental plans" (read we don't pay until after you deal with the government). If the free care is worse than even the worst of the private plans, you will have accomplished nothing except to waste money. If its better than the worst private plans, you will now be providing coverage for more than just those that don't have it. For that matter, what incentives does anyone have to pay for insurance if the government will provide it for them? Or do you plan on making it mandatory for people to buy private insurance? And further, can you point to a single instance in history where the powers and reach of the government was successfully kept in check? Or do you think, contrary to all of the evidence in human history, that the initial limitations on the government reach will seriously withstand the test of time?

Quote :

"no, i'm not extrapolating from movies, but it's not hard to find how unhappy people are with their insurance companies, or company policies that are to deny any claim over $X on the first go-round."

These people still have a choice and a chance. Compare this to the folks in the original articles who have no choice because their choices are being made with the force of law.

Quote :

"Under national health care, this concern goes away."

You think so? You don't think the government won't have a need and incentive to ration your health care? You don't think that you won't have to prove that your pain is beyond X threshold in order to receive the care you want? Hell we can't even provide quality care to our veterans (Obama himself wanted them on private insurance http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/17/obama.veterans/), what in the world makes you think that we'll be able to provide quality care for the rest of this country.

Quote :

"Exactly. Try to find someone over 65 who is NOT on medicare."

Incidentally, for folks saying that we would never see a situation here where the government would have you choose between your personal needs and your medical needs, if you opt out of medicare, you lose your social security benefits:

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/QuinHillyer/Quin-essential-CasesWhy-cant-we-decline-Medicare-benefits-41741347.html

http://www.medicarelawsuit.org/

5/9/2009 11:19:40 PM

From your favorite rag, more evidence of the wonders of capitalism and evil corporations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/09/bad-science-medical-journals-companies

remind me which is easier, to vote someone out for fucking something like this up, or to spend all my savings on lawyers to get the judgment I need.

5/10/2009 8:30:37 AM

Quote :

"remind me which is easier, to vote someone out for fucking something like this up, or to spend all my savings on lawyers to get the judgment I need."

Considering we have known social security to be bankrupt for multiple election cycles with only one failed attempt to fix it, I would almost say the latter.

You are also forgetting the power that consumer choice has on businesses. There currently is a government-induced lack of competition amongst insures, which insulates insurers from having to compete for customers and thus does not provide as many incentives for them to fear the implications of under-delivering on promises. Since most Americans get their health insurance through their employer (thanks to our skewed tax system) consumers are somewhat stuck with whatever insurer their employer chooses for them. Without being able to freely choose another insurer without penalty (forgoing both the tax deduction and the sizable part of their compensation devoted to health insurance) fewer customers are able to vote with their feet and thus insurers receive more funding than they would had their existing customers chosen a more honest, efficient or low-cost insurer. Couple this with the inability to purchase insurance across state lines and we end up with a very limited number of choices for the consumer. If faced with the consumer's ability to freely choose an alternative, insurers would not be able to exist without meeting some satisfactory level of service from its customers. Else, their customers will simply choose the next best alternative and the insurer's revenue dries up.

[Edited on May 10, 2009 at 9:11 AM. Reason : .]

5/10/2009 9:09:20 AM

^^ You're kidding right? You actually think it will be easier to change the political system than to sue a private entity? Remind me again how long it took to get rid of Bush? If it's so easy to get rid of politicians why, despite all the anger, do we still have most of the idiots that voted for the initial bailout. Hell, most the left leaning voters I know can't stand Pelosi, but she's still in power. And then there's shit like this:

Quote :

"British users of the drug have had their application for legal aid rejected, incidentally: the health minister, Ivan Lewis, promised to help them, but documents obtained by the Guardian last week showed that within hours Merck launched an expensive lobbying effort that convinced the minister to back off."

That sort of crap goes on all the time, both here and there, because the government has the power to be involved. Right now, you still have a choice about the medications you take. Tell me, what are you going to do when after extensive lobbying, the government decides that Vioxx or some other big brand medication will be the only medication they will pay for on the government plan?

[Edited on May 10, 2009 at 9:15 AM. Reason : asdf]

5/10/2009 9:14:01 AM

Quote :

"To save funds, Canadian health officials routinely delay the approval of new and more expensive drugs. And even after a drug is approved and a price set, the provincial governments decide whether to put it on the formularies. As a result it takes considerable time for new and more expensive medications to make it into the medicine chests of Canadians. Some never do. One hundred new drugs were launched in the United States from 1997 through 1999. Only 43 made it to market in Canada in that same period. Canadians are still waiting for many life-saving drugs that are currently available in the United States.3 Cancer and AIDS drugs are important examples. In fact, the U.S. has taken the lead worldwide in innovative performance and as a first-launch location for new drug introductions. I’m originally Canadian, so I’ve seen how this works up close and personal. In 2003, my uncle was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. If he’d lived in America, the miracle drug Rituxan might have saved him. But Rituxan wasn’t approved for use in Canada, and he lost his battle with cancer. A couple of years ago, I received an email from a woman in Ontario who had heard my uncle’s story. Her reason for writing? She wanted to let me know that Rituxan still wasn’t available— so she was about to embark on a trip to Michigan for the drug. That’s the grim reality of price controls—they lead to rationing. Similar tragedies have played out over and over again in Britain, France, Italy, and virtually every other country that imposes price controls on drugs. That’s why even as Americans are flocking to the Internet to buy inexpensive drugs from abroad, Canadians and Europeans have for years been coming to the United States, desperately seeking critical medicines that they can’t obtain in their own countries. And they’re willing to pay top-dollar for these drugs out of their own pockets. A few years ago, a friend of mine in New Brunswick, who suffers from type 2 diabetes, learned that Glucophage XR—an oral blood-sugar-control medication made by U.S. manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb—would be the most effective drug for him. But it wasn’t available in New Brunswick. So he had to travel to Bangor, Maine, about four and a half hours’ drive away, to get it. So, yes, some drugs are, in fact, cheaper abroad because governments have imposed price controls. But many of the most cutting- edge drugs aren’t available at all in other countries."

http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/docLib/20081020_Top_Ten_Myths.pdf

5/10/2009 10:03:00 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Rf42zNl9U

5/10/2009 10:11:07 AM