Canadian poet and commentator David Solway has the story:
A few days ago my wife and I brought her mother, who was suffering from a serious leg infection, to the local ER. We were worried about the possibility of gangrene, which an acquaintance some years back had contracted under similar circumstances, resulting in the amputation of his leg. As expected, the ER was jam-packed, and it soon became clear that my mother-in-law would have to wait at least six and even twelve hours before she could be seen. No triage had been performed to determine rank of urgency. Meanwhile, a youngish man in a wheelchair, doubled over and clutching his chest, was bitterly complaining that he had suffered a heart attack. But he too would have to wait before being attended to — assuming he would still be alive by then.
This is publicly funded “single-payer” Medicare, the pride of the Canadian medical system, though in reality, an institutional atrocity equaled only, perhaps, by the British National Health Service (NHS).
Government-mandated / government-funded “health care” is socialized medicine. As Mark Steyn has told us, it’s the key step in imposing socialism on a nation, for who would buck the State when the State has the power of life and death over literally everyone?
Socialism hides its faults by making people wait. – Brian Crozier and Arthur Seldon, Socialism: The Grand Delusion
Delay kills:
There is nothing static in our changing world, and research has tended to show that the Abominable No-man is being replaced by the Prohibitive Procrastinator (PP). Instead of saying ‘No,” the PP says “In due course,” these words foreshadowing Negation by Delay (ND). The theory of ND depends upon establishing a rough idea of what amount of delay will equal negation. If we suppose that a drowning man calls for help, evoking the reply “In due course,’ a judicious pause of five minutes may constitute for all practical purposes, a negative response. Why? Because the delay is greater than the non-swimmer’s expectation of life….Delay is the deadliest form of denial. [C. Northcote Parkinson, The Law, Complete]
Draw your own conclusions.