From Britain:

NHS WARDS, departments and even entire hospitals may be forced to close under the latest health reforms designed to extend patient choice, the Government is warned today.

In a damning report, the Audit Commission says the new funding method, where money follows the patient, is destabilising the NHS and fuelling the current financial crisis.

Instead of increasing choice it could have the opposite effect, with services going to the wall unless the payment system is radically reformed, says the commission. It also cautions that critical services essential to support emergency admissions could close down in some hospitals because of the failure to attract patient referrals.

The system of “payment by results” was brought in by the Government for foundation trusts in 2004-05 to improve choice and efficiency in the NHS and is now being extended to all trusts. Commission insiders gave warning that if foundation trusts, the top- performing hospitals, were finding the system difficult to operate it would create turbulence when extended nationwide.

Under the system hospitals charge a fixed price for an operation, which is agreed nationally, and claim the money back according to the number of patients treated.

Efficient, well-managed hospitals are expected to make a profit from the set price, which includes the costs of equipment and staff overheads. But weaker, inefficient hospitals risk exceeding the “tariff” and falling further into debt.

…

The NHS is already facing a £254 million deficit, despite record funding

A survey by the BMA last month found 385 of the 530 primary care, acute, mental health and community NHS trusts in England had deficits totalling £2.4 billion

The Surrey and Sussex Healthcare Trust has a deficit of £30 million

St George’s Healthcare Trust in London is losing 60 beds, trying to reduce a £24.5million overspend

I love the way they spin the situation, “patient choice is damaging hospitals.”  It’s as if the patients should see to the well being of the hospitals rather than the other way around.

Although they probably are not as rigid as the laws of physics and certainly not as well known there are basic laws of economics the advocates of socialized medicine think they can violate without consequences.  They are wrong and/or ignorant.  They are now paying the price of their delusions and/or ignorance.

I want to build on the The Quote of the Day for today a bit.  I suspect more than just an avoidance of truth.  It’s has to do with data selection and basic assumptions.  To the best of my knowledge there isn’t an Air America radio station within my reception range here in North Central Idaho.  While I was in the Seattle area last week I spent several hours listening to it.  I concluded they have a completely different set of assumptions about the world, and perhaps reality, that are currently inaccessible to me.  “Bush is evil and stupid” seemed to be a basic tenet.  “The war in Iraq is wrong, we must leave as soon as possible” was another.  Another basic assumption appears to be “control things not people”.

No evidence presented or examples given.  Just building on those assumptions.  In another example I just read an editorial which had these two paragraphs:

I don’t mind that Bush is not a man of great intellect. I do mind that he effectively has taken the American public down to his simplistic level. Too many people buy a faulty link between Sept. 11 and Iraq. Too many people think that winning in Iraq will have any impact on the security of Americans at home.

…

At present the danger is from al-Qaida. That can change. The Unibomber was not driven by religious fervor, nor was Timothy McVeigh. The war on terror should focus on access to the tools of terrorism. That would require stringent controls on the sale of materials that can end up in bombs. That would require monitoring who purchases those materials. Wouldn’t it make more sense to monitor those individuals rather than people with Middle Eastern surnames who borrow books from libraries? Books are not incendiary devices.

In the first paragraph no data is given to lead one to believe Bush is “not a man of great intellect” or that he works on a simplistic level. if you wanted to ignore all the funding of terrorism that Saddam engaged in you still don’t have to have a link between 9-11 and Iraq to think converting a repressive dictatorship into a representative democracy is the right thing to do.  And what about drawing all the Muslim extremists to a common location to do battle with our troops rather than in our shopping malls, subways, and sports stadiums?  What about providing a “shining beacon”?  What about destroying the extremist Muslim culture?  Don’t these guys get it?  Or is it they don’t want to get it?  It seems to me that he is the one working at a very simplistic level.

In the second paragraph he isn’t even consistent with himself.  Information is a tool of terrorism.  Doing research on the layout of a city subway, the construction details of a skyscraper, or how to make explosives and poisons from household materials is just as important to the terrorist as the physical materials.  I’ll grant him that we shouldn’t be monitoring people’s reading materials.  But nether should we require stringent controls on steel nails, fingernail polish remover, and hair bleach which can be made into a bomb.  This guy complains Bush is simplistic and and he is totally clueless about bomb building as practiced in the mid-east.  He mentioned McVeigh and doesn’t realize that the raw ingredients to make ammonium nitrate, the main ingredient McVeigh used, are all in the air we breath and our electrical outlets.  Try putting “stringent controls” on that!

I can only conclude that these people live in a different reality.  A simplistic, ignorant reality where Muslim extremists don’t want to kill you if you don’t convert to Islam.  A reality where Mommy (as opposed to Big Brother) government can put childproof locks on the “kitchen cupboards” so the “children” don’t hurt themselves or others.  The reality is that to retain the freedoms we desire we must seek out and imprison or kill the individuals that desire to harm us.  The only tools of terrorism that restrictions upon make any sense reside between the ears of the terrorists.  It is those tools that must be physically controlled or destroyed.  And although I initially had many doubts about going into Iraq, even in hindsight, I think it was the best course of action.

So what of the liberals and Air America’s basic assumptions?  Are they simply projecting their simplistic limitations onto their “enemies”?  Perhaps that’s part of it.  But I think it goes beyond that.  There appears to be more and more evidence that since Muslim terrorists want to destroy capitalism they must be on the side of righteousness.  The “liberals” are in so many ways nothing but haters of capitalism.  I believe they are thinking in terms of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  Never mind that the enemy of your enemy would have you giving up music, praying to Mecca multiple times per day, and killing homosexuals.  It appears to me it is more important to them that Republican control of government be destroyed than our freedom be retained.  Not that Republicans are any great friend of freedom.  I too utilize the “enemy of my enemy is my friend” rationalization. Bush is the enemy of Muslim extremists who would kill me if they could because I will not adhere to their belief system.  I will not convert.  The only available alternatives I see are a genocide of hundreds of millions or something very similar to what Bush is implementing.  I’m going with the Bush solution.  Air America and their ilk fall into the category of “the enemy of my friend is my enemy.”  I rejoice at the news of their failures and scandals.

Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.

Albert Einstein
[This is one of the major claims of F. A. Hayek’s book The Road to Serfdom.  I have no reason to doubt it and this “invariable rule” is a major factor in my opposition to socialism. — Joe]