Death Panels in the UK

[Malice]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...ifestyles.html

More than half of doctors across the UK have backed controversial measures to withhold treatment to smokers and the obese.
According to a new survey around 54 per cent of those who took part said the NHS should have the right to deny non-emergency treatments to those who fail to lose weight or kick their smoking habits.
Members of the networking website doctors.net.uk were asked 'Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients unless they lose weight or stop smoking?'
And although the poll was optional 593 of the 1,096 doctors who participated answered yes.
It is believed that some procedures are less likely to work on those with unhealthier lifestyles and medics say they should not use their already limited resources for such work.
In some parts of England smokers and the obese are already being rejected IVF treatment as well as hip and knee replacements by private clinics but patient groups have reacted angrily to calls for the NHS to follow suit, saying it denies them their basic human rights.
Speaking to The Observer Dr. Tim Ringrose, doctors.net.uk's chief executive, said the shift in attitudes is a result of the need to make huge cut backs.

He said: 'This might appear to be only a slim majority of doctors in favor of limiting treatment to some patients who fail to look after themselves, but it represents a tectonic shift for a profession that has always sought to provide free healthcare from the cradle to the grave.'
Dr. Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, also told the paper: 'Clearly, giving up smoking is a good thing, but blackmailing people by telling them that they have to give up isn't what doctors should be doing.'

Pulse magazine has already reported that around 25 of 91 Primary Care Trusts in England have imposed some treatment bans since April last year.
A move to help save the £20bn, expected by the Government, before 2015.
But treatment bans of any kind were slammed by Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the British Medical Association's consultants committee, who added: 'There are occasions where a doctor may advise an obese person to lose weight before surgery can safely go ahead.
'But treatment bans are wholly unacceptable.'

http://bastiat.mises.org/2012/04/dea...ls-in-britain/

A majority of British doctors polled call for denying medical care to smokers and the obese.

In the United States, we don’t have a British health care system. Yet. But the majority of private health care spending here occurs through a health insurance cartel. In a free market, there would be no such thing as health insurance. Since health outcomes are explained by individual choice, they are not random and are therefore not insurable. Nonetheless, in a system in which mandated health insurance companies are ostensibly in competition with each other, we would expect to see some companies competing for the business of customers who make unhealthy lifestyle choices alongside other companies that choose to reject such customers. In this latter case, incentives would then exist, via market forces, to encourage people to eschew unhealthy lifestyles–incentives that do not exist in the present, hyper-monopolized and corporatist health care system present in the United States today.

Along with price controls and inflation of the money supply, this is one of the key reasons why the health care costs in the U.S. are escalating. And yet, the officially acceptable solutions to problems resulting from years of interventionism in health markets are in the direction of more intervention. Thus we see a specific case of many in which intervention leads to unintended consequences leading to broader intervention, as explained by Ludwig von Mises in the 1920s in his classic Liberalism. I would add that the interventionists fully realize there will be unintended consequences but they ignore them since, in the long run, they play in their favor.

Mises understood this too. ”There is no other choice,” he wrote later. ”[G]overnment either abstains from limited interference with the market forces, or it assumes total control over production and distribution. Either capitalism or socialism; there is no middle of the road.” The World War II-era regulations that established the modern health insurance industry, Medicare and Medicaid in the 1960s, BushCare in the last decade, and ObamaCare today, all prove this point.

Join the fight against ObamaCare and socialized healthcare in general or one day this could happen to you.

[yawanur]

Originally Posted by Malice

Join the fight against ObamaCare and socialized healthcare in general or one day this could happen to you.

Nope. I'm not obese or a smoker.

[Iehovah]

Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients

Repeated for emphasis on just how stupid it is to refer to these as death panels. Serious to fuck, shut the hell up. Nobody fucking cares if Fatty doesn't get coverage for illnesses he brought on himself by stuffing his face full of Fish & Chips, Tea and McCrumpets or wtf'ever they serve on that side of the ocean.

[reggie_love]

Huh. At least they're not denying treatment on the basis of your finances.

Now that would be a fucked up imaginary dystopia.

[Malice]

You have to pay for things, grow up and deal with it. You can't just pass a law and eliminate everything you don't like about the world. Now that would be dystopia.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Malice

You have to pay for things, grow up and deal with it.

thats what the individual mandate is for

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Iehovah

Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients
Should the NHS be allowed to refuse non-emergency treatments to patients

Funny, that's one of the big reasons that America's over-all health is worse than that of almost every other first world country.

It makes people afraid to visit the emergency room because what constitutes an emergency is subjective. Then after you find out your heart attack was actually a mild panic attack, you get a gigantic bill. So you think you're having uncomfortable acid reflux and decide to skip the thousand dollar emergency visit and die on your couch of a heart attack.

[slicknickns]

Another reason to hate the island of socialism in the north atlantic

[007GoldenShower]

I know a complete fat fuck with plenty of money who has had three massively expensive knee replacement ops. I also know a family with a kid who has leukaemia and they're currently raising funds for treatment 1200km away.

These fat smoker fucks can gtfo.

[Malice]

Originally Posted by Psych

Funny, that's one of the big reasons that America's over-all health is worse than that of almost every other first world country.

Misleading: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/201...fe-expectancy/

More myths here: http://www.coalitionoftheobvious.com/Singlepayer.pdf

Relevant to life expectancy is that Blacks bring the average down.

[Struwwelpeter]

Originally Posted by slicknickns

Another reason to hate the island of socialism in the north atlantic

If sewage could animate itself and crawl out of the sewers it would come on Zoklet and post stuff like this.

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Malice

Misleading: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/201...fe-expectancy/

More myths here: http://www.coalitionoftheobvious.com/Singlepayer.pdf

Relevant to life expectancy is that Blacks bring the average down.

http://www.allcountries.org/ranks/pr...2003_2008.html

It's no myth that Americans are afraid to visit the emergency room for fears of gigantic bills.

I guess if you want to compare over-all health you would need to look at the cost of health care compared to the level of service. Then compare the health of a country by measuring the infant mortality rate, life expectancy, occurances of disease, etc...

Turns out there are several organisations that have already done that for us. And guess where America rates?

[Struwwelpeter]

That's not true at all. Nobody has to pay the bills, so nobody gives a darn. Bill = free handkerchief.

We already have "free healthcare" here. There's free healthcare everywhere. You can even use the ambulances like a free taxi.

[slicknickns]

Originally Posted by Jim "fuck latinos" Carrey

If sewage could animate itself and crawl out of the sewers it would come on Zoklet and post stuff like this.

You shut your stupid Goddamn, motherfucking mouth bitch, I mean keyboard and typing

[roasted]

hey dumbshits, this is nothing new. Doctors refuse transplants to drug addicts, smokers, and obese all the time. If the patient is solely responsible and unwilling to change, then they can deal with the consequences.

Some crackhead shouldnt get a new heart when they will just destroy the transplant especially when there is someone else waiting in for the same transplant. This is common sense, and this is just an instance where the media is trying to make a big deal about something that is already happening all over the world.

[Struwwelpeter]

Originally Posted by slicknickns

You shut your stupid Goddamn, motherfucking mouth bitch, I mean keyboard and typing

who dat bitch in you avatar? she taking that dianabol. nasty,,,

[slicknickns]

Originally Posted by Jim "fuck latinos" Carrey

who dat bitch in you avatar? she taking that dianabol. nasty,,,

http://bodyspace.bodybuilding.com/redheadlaw7/

she ain't taking dianabol either, but i'm impressed with your knowledge of steroids

[slicknickns]

nasty? I'd lick that butthole clean

[Psych]

Originally Posted by roasted

hey dumbshits, this is nothing new. Doctors refuse transplants to drug addicts, smokers, and obese all the time. If the patient is solely responsible and unwilling to change, then they can deal with the consequences.

Some crackhead shouldnt get a new heart when they will just destroy the transplant especially when there is someone else waiting in for the same transplant. This is common sense, and this is just an instance where the media is trying to make a big deal about something that is already happening all over the world.

That's all well and good, but with socialized health care everyone pays for everyone else so what right do doctors have to refuse care for someone who has already paid for it?

[Malice]

No they don't, everyone doesn't pay the same amount of taxes. And why should they be forced to accept the reimbursement that the government sets? Why not socialize supermarkets?

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Malice

No they don't, everyone doesn't pay the same amount of taxes. And why should they be forced to accept the reimbursement that the government sets? Why not socialize supermarkets?

I'm not for socialization. Just pointing out that in a socialist system you don't get to pick and choose who gets service. That's the whole point of socialism.

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Psych

Funny, that's one of the big reasons that America's over-all health is worse than that of almost every other first world country.

It makes people afraid to visit the emergency room because what constitutes an emergency is subjective. Then after you find out your heart attack was actually a mild panic attack, you get a gigantic bill. So you think you're having uncomfortable acid reflux and decide to skip the thousand dollar emergency visit and die on your couch of a heart attack.

I'm not going to sit here and argue politics with you, which is what the latter half of what you said boils down to, because there's a bunch of bullshit tied up in that, but the statement you have made here is wrong - emergency care is concisely defined by doctors and insurance companies as that care which is meant to preserve life and limb. The standards involved in that are objective enough, and based on a doctor's assessment and diagnosis, so any qualification of this as "subjective" is bullshit qualification meant to insinuate that the decision was made by some pencil-pushing insurance agency dickhead with no actual medical knowledge. Inaccurate, at best.

[roasted]

Originally Posted by Psych

That's all well and good, but with socialized health care everyone pays for everyone else so what right do doctors have to refuse care for someone who has already paid for it?

I wasnt referring to the financial aspect, I was referring to patients that are denied transplants because they are reckless with their health. The waiting lists are so long for organ transplants that they shouldnt be wasted on people that put themselves in that situation.

ie- Doctors shouldnt give liver transplants to alcoholics, crackheads shouldnt get a new heart, etc. The transplants should (and do) go to people with birth defects, degenerate diseases, cancer, etc.

[Communicate]

Originally Posted by Malice

No they don't, everyone doesn't pay the same amount of taxes. And why should they be forced to accept the reimbursement that the government sets? Why not socialize supermarkets?

Indeed.

They shouldn't be forced to accept any sort of tyranny, but they might be reasonably expected to accept that somebody will stop their attempts at tyranny (through irrational economic power) over everybody else.

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Iehovah

I'm not going to sit here and argue politics with you, which is what the latter half of what you said boils down to, because there's a bunch of bullshit tied up in that, but the statement you have made here is wrong - emergency care is concisely defined by doctors and insurance companies as that care which is meant to preserve life and limb. The standards involved in that are objective enough, and based on a doctor's assessment and diagnosis, so any qualification of this as "subjective" is bullshit qualification meant to insinuate that the decision was made by some pencil-pushing insurance agency dickhead with no actual medical knowledge. Inaccurate, at best.

It's subjective for the patient. They can't know whats wrong with them without going to the emergency room and being treated. By that point you're fucked if it turns out what you thought was an emergency is not considered to be one. That's obviously a big factor in the preventable deaths statistics, seeing as how the socialized countries all have lower rates. Maybe not though, no one could say for sure but it seems like that would be a rather large coincidence.

[Psych]

Originally Posted by roasted

I wasnt referring to the financial aspect, I was referring to patients that are denied transplants because they are reckless with their health. The waiting lists are so long for organ transplants that they shouldnt be wasted on people that put themselves in that situation.

ie- Doctors shouldnt give liver transplants to alcoholics, crackheads shouldnt get a new heart, etc. The transplants should (and do) go to people with birth defects, degenerate diseases, cancer, etc.

I agree with everything you posted. I wish there was no socialized medecine and doctors could have the right to treat whoever they deem necessary. Unfortunately in this case they are using peoples tax money to pay for health care and then denying those same taxpayers the treatment that they have already paid for. Seems wrong to me.

[is all mememememe with me]

Originally Posted by Psych

That's all well and good, but with socialized health care everyone pays for everyone else so what right do doctors have to refuse care for someone who has already paid for it?

you probly need to factor into that the fact that by smoking, on average you will be paying an extra £2000 per year in taxes. consider still that only 1 in 4 smokers actually get health problems thru smoking and thats around £320,000 of revenue to cover the medical bills of each sick smoker for a 40 year period of smoking, just from the cigarette revenue alone. that's without the national insurance of around ave £1000 per year that everyone pays anyway. so each smoker is effectively paying 3 times the bill thru cigarette taxes.

then compare that to some idiot who goes and breaks his neck sky diving. he'll pay pretty much nothing in extra taxation for his pleasure but could cost way in excess of £2,000,000 in medical costs to the nhs.

if you wanna get really fussy you could say that many of the road traffic accident victims didn't really have to travel by car and could have gotten a bus or walked their journey. so why should the rest of us be footing their bills too.

we could go on all day like this tbh. personally i think doctors should do their jobs that they are paid to do, and stop trying to preach to us how to live just so it makes their jobs a little easier.

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Psych

It's subjective for the patient. They can't know whats wrong with them without going to the emergency room and being treated. By that point you're fucked if it turns out what you thought was an emergency is not considered to be one. That's obviously a big factor in the preventable deaths statistics, seeing as how the socialized countries all have lower rates. Maybe not though, no one could say for sure but it seems like that would be a rather large coincidence.

Right, subjective for the patient, not for the doctor.

In point of fact, if you can sit there and herp derp about whether you should or shouldn't go to the doctor, because you don't know if it's an emergency, then you are NOT having an emergency - because an emergency, in the medical, objective definition of the word, is one where you are going to die right away or lose an arm/leg/cock without medical intervention right this fucking minute. It means that you're bleeding to death, or that if you're moved from the wreck, you'll be paralyzed for life.


Not that you might die some time down the road because you have diabetes and won't stop stuffing your fat face, or that you might have a coronary some day because you have high blood pressure.

The shit you are talking about, in medical terms, is "preventative care", the taking care of things that may or may not impact your life sometime down the road... which means just about EVERYTHING.

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Iehovah

Right, subjective for the patient, not for the doctor.

In point of fact, if you can sit there and herp derp about whether you should or shouldn't go to the doctor, because you don't know if it's an emergency, then you are NOT having an emergency - because an emergency, in the medical, objective definition of the word, is one where you are going to die right away or lose an arm/leg/cock without medical intervention right this fucking minute. It means that you're bleeding to death, or that if you're moved from the wreck, you'll be paralyzed for life.

The warning signs of an immanent stroke or heart attack (which would qualify as an emergency) could be;

Dizzyness
Blurry vision
Headache
Weakness
Chest discomfort
Sweating
Nausea

Now tell me how you couldn't mistake having a heart attack for any number of non-emergency situations. In fact it happens all the time, even mistaking a heart attack for indigestion. What do all the emergency rooms say to do when you are having any of those symptoms? Call 911 immediately. Unfortunately in the America situation of health care, the first thing you have to do is decide is this worth the gamble.

Not that you might die some time down the road because you have diabetes and won't stop stuffing your fat face, or that you might have a coronary some day because you have high blood pressure.

The shit you are talking about, in medical terms, is "preventative care", the taking care of things that may or may not impact your life sometime down the road... which means just about EVERYTHING.

Read the notes from the link I posted. The nations with the least amount of insured people have the highest number of preventable deaths. Correlation isn't causation, but can you think of a better explaination?

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Psych

The warning signs of an immanent stroke or heart attack (which would qualify as an emergency) could be;

Dizzyness
Blurry vision
Headache
Weakness
Chest discomfort
Sweating
Nausea

Now tell me how you couldn't mistake having a heart attack for any number of non-emergency situations. In fact it happens all the time, even mistaking a heart attack for indigestion. What do all the emergency rooms say to do when you are having any of those symptoms? Call 911 immediately. Unfortunately in the America situation of health care, the first thing you have to do is decide is this worth the gamble.

It's not a gamble. It is your fucking life. Either a fuck is given about it, or is not. In further point of fact, you won't spend an extended and expensive period of time in the hospital when the doctor takes a look at you and points out that you are not actually dying of a heart attack. Yeah, it will cost you, and no, everybody else should NOT foot the bill for your panic attack over something you didn't have the ability to diagnose in the first place.

If you have reason to think you might have a heart problem that would cause you to ignorantly self-diagnose yourself as having a heart attack rather than common illness, then you are a fool for not seeing a doctor sooner and an asshole for clogging up an emergency room full of people who really ARE in immediate threat to life and limb.

Read the notes from the link I posted. The nations with the least amount of insured people have the highest number of preventable deaths. Correlation isn't causation, but can you think of a better explanation?

As for the rest, that's politics. I hadn't intended to go there, but we can if you really insist on pushing this point.

[Malice]

Originally Posted by Psych

The nations with the least amount of insured people have the highest number of preventable deaths. Correlation isn't causation, but can you think of a better explaination?

What's the methodology? What do they consider preventable deaths? Flawed studies are done all the time.

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Iehovah

It's not a gamble. It is your fucking life. Either a fuck is given about it, or is not. In further point of fact, you won't spend an extended and expensive period of time in the hospital when the doctor takes a look at you and points out that you are not actually dying of a heart attack. Yeah, it will cost you, and no, everybody else should NOT foot the bill for your panic attack over something you didn't have the ability to diagnose in the first place.

If you have reason to think you might have a heart problem that would cause you to ignorantly self-diagnose yourself as having a heart attack rather than common illness, then you are a fool for not seeing a doctor sooner and an asshole for clogging up an emergency room full of people who really ARE in immediate threat to life and limb.

As for the rest, that's politics. I hadn't intended to go there, but we can if you really insist on pushing this point.

You do gamble. Your life vs. thousands and thousands of dollars if you don't wind up having the stroke you thought you were having. That's a big decision for most people. Bankrupt family vs. Death. Not as easy as you may think. You're not a fool for going to the emergency for symptoms which is every doctors advice if you feel sudden symptoms like the ones I listed.

Originally Posted by Malice

What's the methodology? What do they consider preventable deaths? Flawed studies are done all the time.

I don't know, honestly. It's called the Nolte and McKee methodology.

"It is startling to see the U.S. falling even farther behind on this crucial indicator of health system performance. By focusing on deaths amenable to health care, Nolte and McKee strip out factors such as population and lifestyle differences that are often cited in response to international comparisons showing the U.S. lagging in health outcomes. The fact that other countries are reducing these preventable deaths more rapidly, yet spending far less, indicates that policy, goals, and efforts to improve health systems make a difference". -Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen.


http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7424/1129.full
It is found that when adjusting for disability life expectancy, some countries move way up the list, like socialist Canada. While others like Semi-socialist USA move down a couple spots.

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Psych

You do gamble. Your life vs. thousands and thousands of dollars if you don't wind up having the stroke you thought you were having. That's a big decision for most people. Bankrupt family vs. Death. Not as easy as you may think. You're not a fool for going to the emergency for symptoms which is every doctors advice if you feel sudden symptoms like the ones I listed.

You're a fool for not going sooner, an action which would have saved you thousands of dollars, or worse, death.

Because going in to see a doctor about your excess of chub, difficulty breathing and other heart-attack contributory factors does not cost thousands of dollars, and is far better PREVENTION, then waiting until you are wheezing like a marathon runner and wondering if those chest pains are a heart attack or the fifth burrito you stuffed in your slavering maw.

Point: If you let things get to that state, you are probably too stupid to deserve to live, or behaving in a deliberately ignorant fashion. Because there's no excuse for waiting until the last minute.

That you are willing to sign over your life and health to the government in exchange for this suicidal level of laziness speaks volumes. Think about that - which administrations do you hate the most? Would you trust those people with all of it, just to save a lousy hundred bucks on seeing a doctor?

More importantly, even IF the government covered everything, would it change the way you live your life, or would you continue being one of those inexcusably lazy people who can't be bothered to see a doctor until that "emergency" happens, something you should never have waited for in the first place?

If it's the latter, you're already asking to die anyway, and nobody should foot the damn bill to save you.

[Tachosomoza]

Originally Posted by Malice

You have to pay for things, grow up and deal with it. You can't just pass a law and eliminate everything you don't like about the world. Now that would be dystopia.

Says who?

[is all mememememe with me]

when my time comes i'll die. whenever it is and however it comes. 200 years ago life expectancy was 38. i've exceeded this now so anything from here on i consider a bonus.

i'm not one of these people who thinks its some kind of human right to live till i'm 90. i'll accept whatever now.

[Communicate]

Originally Posted by is all mememememe with me

when my time comes i'll die. whenever it is and however it comes. 200 years ago life expectancy was 38. i've exceeded this now so anything from here on i consider a bonus.

i'm not one of these people who thinks its some kind of human right to live till i'm 90. i'll accept whatever now.

Well, yes.
But if you lived over your 30's you could expect to live into your 70's, as people do now. Just many people died young.

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Tachosomoza

Says who?

Logic it out, Tachito.

If people COULD pass a law and get rid of ANYTHING they didn't like, your sorry ass would be gone.

Get it now?

[Psych]

Originally Posted by Iehovah

You're a fool for not going sooner, an action which would have saved you thousands of dollars, or worse, death.

Because going in to see a doctor about your excess of chub, difficulty breathing and other heart-attack contributory factors does not cost thousands of dollars, and is far better PREVENTION, then waiting until you are wheezing like a marathon runner and wondering if those chest pains are a heart attack or the fifth burrito you stuffed in your slavering maw.

Idiot. You can have a heart attack or stroke even if your the poster boy for good health. Often times these things are sudden onset of symptoms which if not dealt with immediately will cause death. In the socialized care model you shouldn't have to worry about the odds of false alarms and a huge bill. Saying that it's only fools who stuff their face that have heart attacks is silly.

Point: If you let things get to that state, you are probably too stupid to deserve to live, or behaving in a deliberately ignorant fashion. Because there's no excuse for waiting until the last minute.

That you are willing to sign over your life and health to the government in exchange for this suicidal level of laziness speaks volumes. Think about that - which administrations do you hate the most? Would you trust those people with all of it, just to save a lousy hundred bucks on seeing a doctor?

More importantly, even IF the government covered everything, would it change the way you live your life, or would you continue being one of those inexcusably lazy people who can't be bothered to see a doctor until that "emergency" happens, something you should never have waited for in the first place?

If it's the latter, you're already asking to die anyway, and nobody should foot the damn bill to save you.

I don't want socialized health care. I'm just pointing out that if fat people have been contributing to their state care insurance and suddenly the state decides theyre not going to cover fatties, that's hypocritical of them. The "free" health care people are always acting high and mighty that they are so compassionate towards everyone, when in this instance they are acting like the callous pricks every socialist really is deep down inside.

[Iehovah]

Originally Posted by Psych

Idiot. You can have a heart attack or stroke even if your the poster boy for good health.

This is the exception, not the rule. You would be correct in asserting that you can have a stroke while in good health, but strokes are typically symptomatic of poor health, obesity being one of the most prevalent forms of self-induced poor health, and a leading candidate for the cause of a stroke or heart attack.

Often times these things are sudden onset of symptoms which if not dealt with immediately will cause death. In the socialized care model you shouldn't have to worry about the odds of false alarms and a huge bill. Saying that it's only fools who stuff their face that have heart attacks is silly.

It is silly; that's why I didn't say that. I used the fatties as an example, because the fatties are ... see above.

Again, to previous point: if it is a false alarm, there will not be a huge hospital bill. Hell, the person can't even be denied emergency care, so they are guaranteed to come off a winner - either you got your life saved, or you paid a piddling sum for some peace of mind that you don't really deserve... unless you're that "exception" who was in perfectly good health and had a stroke because of whatever stress life threw at you.

I don't want socialized health care. I'm just pointing out that if fat people have been contributing to their state care insurance and suddenly the state decides theyre not going to cover fatties, that's hypocritical of them. The "free" health care people are always acting high and mighty that they are so compassionate towards everyone, when in this instance they are acting like the callous pricks every socialist really is deep down inside.

There's nothing hypocritical about it. Your perception is hypcorisy is based on an ignorant assumption about what "emergency" care is. You cannot pass off a layman's interpretation of an "emergency" as the real thing, because what the "state" uses isn't the layman's interpretation.

In short, if what YOU were saying constituted an emergency, then yeah... it would be hypocritical. However it is not, you are wrong about emergencies, and because the state doesn't follow that standard, there's nothing "suddenly" about the coverage. This isn't new, this isn't special. The state doesn't and hasn't covered that, plain and simple.

You are attempting to redefine an emergency in order to fit what you think health care should be. That is not the reality of health care, simply your wishful thinking.

As for compassion, there ain't much of that in the health insurance industry, and generally not the gummint either. Which is why passing ever more control over one's health and life to them is fucking stupid.

[southernsun]

If someone smokes in this day and age, they are fully aware of the risks involved, and therefor shouldn't be given any help with any illnesses/cancer they get from smoking as they are causing it themselves and knowingly doing it, so fuck them.

For the obese fucks, their lazyness got them into that state, we would be offending Mr Charles Darwin himself if we give them help, afterall, what happened to natural selection, survival of the fittest? Giving them care and help only encourages them to pollute the gene pool with their fat lazy genes.