Bookworm on Sep 19 2008 | Filed under: Education, Health
Yes, Minister! was a very, very funny British TV show from the 1980s, before Britain (and the BBC) went completely round the bend. There is no better argument for school choice and non-socialized medicine than this funny clip from that show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLDb2V86Ei0
Hat tip: IWF
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Bookworm on Aug 07 2008 | Filed under: Health
Robert Knight wrote a long article commenting on a Washington Post article stating that homophobia is the main cause of a huge increase in AIDS among the world’s homosexual population. Here’s the WaPo take on the subject:
Twenty-five years after AIDS was branded the “gay plague,” the virus is again exacting a disproportionate toll on men [...]
Bookworm on Jun 08 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, England, France, Health, Islam, John McCain, Medicine, Muslim violence
Britain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one:
Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows himself to be remarkably [...]
Bookworm on Jun 02 2008 | Filed under: Barack Obama, Britain, England, Health, Hillary Clinton, Medicine
There’s talk of Obama giving Hillary the green light to socialize American medicine if she’ll walk away from the primaries. Melanie Phillips gives us a good example of why the renewed specter of socialized medicine should worry us:
To the Labour Party, the National Health Service is the talismanic proof of its own moral superiority.
Time and [...]
Bookworm on Apr 22 2008 | Filed under: Health, Medicine
Many years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine who was a medical student on his neurology rotation. He related what was, to me, an amazing story. The patient he saw that day was a fairly young man who had suffered a major stroke, resulting in an almost complete loss of speech (aphasia). [...]
Bookworm on Feb 28 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Health, Medicine
One of Obama’s (and Clinton’s) many sins is the desire to nationalize medicine, so that the government gets to decide who deserves treatment and who doesn’t. Britain, as always, serves as a useful horrible example of what can happen under such a system:
A 61-year-old grandmother has been denied vital heart surgery for being too [...]
Bookworm on Feb 08 2008 | Filed under: Health
If you suffer from migraines, read this from a fellow sufferer. You may well see yourself in the opinion piece, although I’m grateful that I never suffered migraines as severe as those that affected Ms. Hustvedt. Certainly, though, I suffered from the enough to make parts of my life really hellish, and had headaches with [...]
Bookworm on Jan 15 2008 | Filed under: Health
AIDS is a disease that does not distinguish between race, religion, sex, or national origin. Like all diseases, it is opportunistic, and thrives when behaviors provide perfect incubation and vector situations. The promiscuity that characterized gay sex in the late 1970s and 1980s was the perfect petri dish for the disease to transition [...]
Bookworm on Jan 08 2008 | Filed under: Anti-war, Barack Obama, Democrats, Education, Health, Islam, Muslim violence, Vaccinations
The kids are back in school and I thought the house would fall silent and I would blog again. However, it turns out — and this is very flattering — that there were a lot of people who wanted to talk to me but felt they couldn’t while the kids were around. I’ve [...]
Bookworm on Jan 03 2008 | Filed under: Britain, England, Health
Yesterday, I read that the British health care and ambulance services had been devastated by New Year’s drunkenness, a self-inflicted illness for which I, as a tee-totaller, have little sympathy. If you vomit because you got blitzed, serves you right.
Today, however, I read something that caused me to feel serious sympathy for the beleaguered, [...]
Bookworm on Jan 01 2008 | Filed under: Britain, Health, Medicine
Britain’s ailing national health care system continues to try to heal itself, usually at patient’s expense. I don’t know about you, but this proposal doesn’t strike me as something that’s going to result in improved health care:
Millions of people with arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part [...]
Bookworm on Dec 19 2007 | Filed under: England, Health
I won’t quibble with the need to distribute health care more evenly across America. I will fight, though, against putting health care in the government’s hands. Think of the DMV, think of airport security, think of the IRS, think of any interaction you’ve had with a government entity that has no competition, and tell me [...]
Bookworm on Dec 17 2007 | Filed under: Health
On what do I base the prediction in the title of this post? On this story:
California’s Assembly on Monday approved Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan for universal health insurance, as overhauling health care grows as a prominent issue in the 2008 presidential election.
The compromise legislation, which passed by a vote of 46 to 31, was hammered [...]
Bookworm on Nov 17 2007 | Filed under: Health
Nowadays, when we use the phrase “killer shoes” we mean either that they look fantastic or, perhaps, that they make our feet hurt. In the old days, though, pre-antibiotic, killer shoes really killed, as I discovered from this old 1898 case:
In the latter part of August, 1895, while this certificate was in force, Freeman O. [...]
Bookworm on Nov 07 2007 | Filed under: Climate change, Health
Be fat and die has been the mantra for decades now. The scientists had figured out the direct correlation between that excess avoirdupois and death. Except it turns out it’s not that simple:
Being overweight boosts the risk of dying from diabetes and kidney disease but not cancer or heart disease, and carrying some extra pounds [...]
Bookworm on Nov 04 2007 | Filed under: Afghanistan, Children, Health
Before 9/11, when the Taliban were still a concern to people of all good will, I remember seeing news reports and hearing stories about the horrors of life for women under the Taliban. They were, quite literally, trapped in their homes, unable to go out even fully covered. A logical by-product was a [...]
Bookworm on Nov 02 2007 | Filed under: Children, Health, Parenting
I’m about to write something provocative, so feel free to beat me up on it, provided that you do so politely. It’s about the increasing prevalence of Asbergers diagnoses amongst children. Asbergers is a rather amorphous condition, although it’s considered to be part of the Autism spectrum. Here’s the definition from one [...]
Bookworm on Oct 27 2007 | Filed under: Britain, Health
I won’t add anything here, since I think you can draw your own conclusions:
Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs.
More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year, a figure that is forecast to rise
Thousands of “health tourists” are [...]
Bookworm on Oct 23 2007 | Filed under: Britain, Health
Yes, it’s been a quiet blogging day for me. It’s a combination of work and mental stultification. Nevertheless, I was intrigued by this article describing how dreadfully ill the British are:
Britain has been branded “the sick man of Europe” after a Government report revealed a nation blighted by record levels of obesity, alcohol abuse, diabetes [...]
Bookworm on Oct 02 2007 | Filed under: Health
Something, of course, is inevitably going to get me at the end, but it’s probably not going to be Alzheimers. A few years ago, the Nun Study established that people who wrote complicated sentences as parts of complicated essays were less likely to get Alzheimers. As those who read my blog know, my [...]
Bookworm on Sep 23 2007 | Filed under: Health, Hillary Clinton
After pointing out Hillary’s draconian get insurance or be unemployable, Steyn analyzes the numbers of uninsured:
Nobody really knows how many “uninsured” there are: Two different Census Bureau surveys conducted in the same year identify the number of uninsured as A) 45 million or B) 19 million. The first figure is the one you hear about, [...]
Bookworm on Sep 18 2007 | Filed under: Health, Hillary Clinton, Medicine, Vaccinations
Drudge proves himself to be a good sport by linking to a Joe Klein post at Time Magazine’s website, in which Klein savages Drudge. Drudge is probably more than a good sport, though. He’s smart, too, because all that the post does is make Klein look like an idiot. Here is Klein’s [...]
Bookworm on Sep 17 2007 | Filed under: Health
Since I never watch or read advertisements, I’ve been very out of the loop about the new breed of energy drinks flooding the market. Even those in the loop — that is, those aware of their existence — may not be aware of just how dangerous they are. Laer, at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, sounds a tocsin [...]
Bookworm on Sep 11 2007 | Filed under: Health
I have a wonderful recipe for an egg and spinach dish, although the rest of the family is less enthusiastic about it than I am. From now on, though, I can say say “Tough! It’s a health food.”
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Bookworm on Aug 29 2007 | Filed under: Health, Immigration, Media matters
The San Francisco Chronicle has a front page story today about the record number of uninsured people in California:
A record 6.8 million Californians, nearly 1 in 5 of the state’s residents, went without health insurance at some time during 2006, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Nationally, a record 47 million Americans, [...]
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