Who's The Decider?
Ron Paul writes about people's speech being used to deny them healthcare in the UK:
Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment.The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing so is safe seems to imply that no one will actually suffer from this policy. However, health-care providers have great discretion to determine when it is "safe" to withhold treatment. So, patients could be left with chronic pain or be denied certain procedures that could improve their health but are not necessary to make them "safe." Patients accused of racism or sexism could also find themselves at the bottom of the NHS's infamous "waiting lists," unable to receive treatment until it truly is a matter of life and death.
Since many people define racism and sexism as "anything I disagree with," the new policy will no doubt lead to people being denied medical care for statements that most reasonable people would consider unobjectionable.
This is not the first time NHS has withheld treatment because of an individual's behavior. A couple years ago, another local health committee announced it would withhold routine or nonemergency surgeries from smokers and the obese. Since reducing smoking and obesity benefits both individual patients and the health care system as a whole, this policy may appear defensible. But denying or delaying care violates medical ethics and sets a dangerous precedent. If treatment could be denied to smokers and the obese, then it could also be denied to those who engage in promiscuous sex, drive over the speed limit, don't get the "proper" number of vaccinations for themselves and their children, or have "dangerous" political views.
Government bureaucrats denying care to individuals for arbitrary reasons is the inevitable result of government interference in the health-care market. Government intervention is supposed to ensure quality and affordable (or free) care for all. But, government intervention artificially lowers the costs of health care to patients while increasing costs to providers. As demand rises and supply falls, government imposes rationing to address the shortages and other problems caused by prior government interference.
The problem with people who want to deny others healthcare or otherwise "cancel" them is where the line is for who gets denied and on what grounds.
We have a First Amendment not for nice, pleasant, desirable speech but for speech other people would prefer to have squelched.
I hate racism, but I feel the healthiest answer to it is not to shut down speech but to have more speech against that racism.
The moment we start freezing people out of medical services for speaking is the moment we start sending democratic society -- for which free speech is essential -- down the tubes.
The results will be bloody -- as they are in every place where democracy has died or has ot been allowed to be.
Related: Lionel Shriver on the things we're now not supposed to say -- or be.
via ifeminists
Of course. Why else would a government want to control health care?
(Well, okay, the massive quantities of money available for skimming is also a reason.)
dee nile at January 4, 2020 4:29 AM
This aspect of the article bothers me. I think it's completely irrelevant whether the majority of reasonable people consider a patient's views racist or sexist or whatever-ist or whatever-phobic. The function of the medical staff is to fix to the best of their ability the slab of human meat that sits before them. Not to sit there and have discussions on any particular patient's point of views and the amount of treatment this patient is entitled to based on those views.
By the way, what happens if the hospital discovers that they mistakenly assigned statements to a patient that the patient never said and withholds quality of life treatment?
I'm guessing the misjudged and maligned patient will sue.
Patrick at January 4, 2020 5:32 AM
"I'm guessing the misjudged and maligned patient will sue."
I'm guessing the misjudged and maligned patient might try, but will find healthcare providers are covered by "qualified immunity" or some such.
Old RPM Daddy (OldRPMDaddy at GMail dot com) at January 4, 2020 6:02 AM
Women who don't want to room with a male "woman", or washed by a male "woman" are gonna get kicked out.
NicoleK at January 4, 2020 6:37 AM
Who decides if the patient is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc? What criteria will be used? Will there be an appeal process?
Petty bureaucrats should not be put in charge if vital operations. The idea that the regulatory state can exercise discretion and offer wise judgement is shibboleth being used as a political enforcement tool; nothing more than a ploy to censor political opponents, to silence them. And, as NicoleK points out, to advance an agenda that cannot be advanced by argument alone.
Conan the Grammarian at January 4, 2020 7:31 AM
I had a colonoscopy last year. The anesthetic made me talkative, both in the surgical suite and the recovery room. I'm not certain what I said in the surgical suite, but my wife said the everyone was laughing as they brought me out, including the doctor. I really tuned up in the recovery room. My recovery nurse was an attractive woman name Jen. I asked my wife, twice, if Jen was coming home with us. I suggested to Jen that any man would be lucky to have her in his life unless, and here my wife began cringing, "you're one of those carpet munchers". Jen had to leave the room at this point, as she was doubled over in laughter. A moment later I heard loud laughter coming from the nurses station. Jen came back just in time to hear me tell the male orderly that, although Jen was cute, he was not, since he had too much hair on his face. I was covered only by a hospital gown, and it slipped, and I asked Jen if she knew about shrinkage. She was old enough to get the joke, and had to leave the room once again. My wife told me later what I'd said, and I was aghast. Jen wheeled me to the parking garage, and not another word was said about my behavior in the recovery room. And, no, the Baylor Scott & White medical system did not ban me.
Stephen Taylor at January 4, 2020 8:33 AM
You’re just looking at another kind of rationing.
I am again surprised I have to explain such things.
What is so tough to understand about this truth: unless you pay, you will not get to say how you are treated.
No, be quiet, that is the truth.
Radwaste at January 4, 2020 8:44 AM
Suppose you have some medical staff (whom you do not know) who is trans and you use the wrong pronouns--do you get banned? What if you have tourettes and curse constantly?
And yet they have no such restrictions on treating criminals who actually committed a crime, or even terrorists.
cc at January 5, 2020 10:54 AM
" unless you pay, you will not get to say how you are treated."
Sort of like how, with social media, if you don't pay, you are the product. Whoever pays is the real customer, and that's who the vendor/system is aiming to please.
With socialized healthcare, the customer is the government, so that's for whom the providers work. Sort of like how veterinarians work for the master, not the dog. You see where this is going....
bw1 at January 12, 2020 12:01 PM
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