A UK tale of health care and airport scanners

[Sandra]

The tangled web we weave with “human rights”

A UK tale of health care and airport scanners

Anna Grayson  Tuesday, November 29, 2011

London, England - A new report out by the Equality and Human Rights Commission has thrown a light on the abuses that invariably come when you socialise healthcare. This one focused on home care for the elderly run by local councils. The chronic disregard of pensioners was found to be so appalling many have been left ‘wanting to die’. Of the 500k people that are under government care, 250k experienced horrendous neglect. Here are some examples of what ‘carers’ get up to:

• Refusal to heat food in a microwave and serve due to “health and safety” concerns
• Soiled sheets unchanged for weeks
• The frail put to bed at 2:45pm
• Lack of time to carry out vital tasks like washing and dressing
• Physical abuse such as rough handling and shouting
• Systematic theft of money
• Leaving food out for a blind and deaf man and not telling him where it is

And it is no better in hospitals, where a study earlier this year exposed similar abuses, like leaving food out of reach, so that patients starved and were so thirsty they couldn’t cry out for help. Hot off the press yesterday, we learn that botched operations are now in the tens of thousands each year, post-operative infections are at an all time high and the death rate due to NHS care is ‘alarmingly high’.

Some elderly with means are even hiring private nurses and having them pose as friends and relatives to ensure they are bathed and fed while in hospital. It is so surreally absurd and obscene, it almost sounds like a comedy sketch, but sadly it is all too real and the tragic result of a human ‘rights’ culture. And it will be the fate of America if Obamacare is not repealed.

When left to the devises of man, a ‘right’ becomes a politicised tool to manipulate for purposes of greed, power or some other nefarious intent. When passed into law, personal responsibility is abrogated and it is left to the courts to fight out whether a right has been denied based on evidence gathered.

Take the simple concept of clean drinking water which the UN Human Rights Council says should be a ‘right’ recognised under international law. Now since we can’t live without it for more than a few days and we all support that everyone should have it, wouldn’t this be a reasonable law? No it would not. Just because we call something a ‘right’ does not make it so. The thinking gets muddled when we fail to distinguish the difference between a ‘right’ and a necessity. Water is necessary to human life, so our governments should ensure their citizens have access to it. Unfortunately some governments fail to do so as in developing nations where water access is unsafe or scarce. In 2003 Kerala, India suffered extreme water shortages when corrupt officials granted water rights to a foreign soft drinks manufacturer, allowing them to extract a million gallons a day. To combat this kind of poor government judgment, the UN resolution seeks to let the responsibility fall to the international community, which usually means taxing richer nations to supply that water in various programs. But much of that money will inevitably end up funding a new Mercedes or palatial residence for the local despot. The status quo remains as the tyranny of taxation hampers the ability of private sector initiatives to take action.

It’s the same with health care. In Europe, no politician will renounce social health care for fear of losing his votes. In fact, the best way to gain votes is to denounce its privatization. Money continues to be thrown at services no longer fit for purpose and when that’s gone, the inevitable ‘efficiency ‘ cuts come.

Billions have been spent here in the UK on commissions and reports by outside agencies producing endless reports on how to fix the NHS. Many point to competition being a key to improvement. Yet the country remains frozen into non-action over this sacred cow because of our deeply imbedded ‘rights’ culture. Even Socialist Sweden was able to lift itself from health care hell into market led reforms that have transformed their health service. In former communist Slovakia nearly half of health care is privately serviced.

The British clearly haven’t suffered enough yet, as they cling to the proposition that universal health care is a right and proper way to equalize resources and makes society ‘fair’ for everyone. In the process, free market principles are obliterated forcing people who want other non-government alternatives to fund them themselves while still paying tax to for a universal system. And the basic human interaction of one person helping another in need through the choice that a well developed conscience dictates, is replaced by the state and bureaucratic decisions based on statistics and budgets. Taxation and the appeal to our innate sense of fairness is the oxygen that feeds this system, and it inhibits the freedom for civil society to take action because money is squeezed from that sector. And when a ‘right’ is designated to another party to administer, the culture gets lazy about doing the decent thing. Need can only be truly addressed on an individual basis by people whose objectives are driven by personal charity and not personal greed or power.

‘Rights’ culture turns into tyranny when we fillet out moral virtue and conscience. When you leave the judgement of decent behaviour to another – a politician, a court or a human rights commission, you set up a value system that encourages self-centred thinking devoid of personal responsibility. Western civilization was built on Christian values and its attendant rule of law based on Mosaic Law or the Ten Commandants - the ultimate guideline for personal responsibility. Follow these and you have moral order which in turn leads to societal order. ”Honour your father and your mother”, takes care of our elders. If you can’t, then someone in your family will and if they can’t, then it falls to our neighbours, which is way the Christian moral ethic operates. If we swept out government intervention tomorrow, civil society would pick up the baton. Faith groups and others would set up homes for the elderly where volunteers, religious and others would band together supported by private fundraising to do what a culture powered by love does. We see this ethic in operation time after time, especially in America after natural disasters. People pitch in and help their neighbour.

America’s founding made this culture of love endemic and is the reason why so many want to flee to its shores, many of whom don’t even understand why this principle works, but they do get that the freedom it spawns does work. The founding fathers also knew the role of government must be to protect this freedom out of which personal responsibility flourishes. This was all placed under God in the Declaration of Independence which recognized the fundamental rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

The culture of ‘rights’ claims to protect, but it can never succeed. Firstly, take God out of the equation and we will never agree on what a ‘right’ is. It becomes a euphemism for decency. Bloated on luxurious budgets at the expense of ordinary people, the EU unceasingly dreams up new goodies to throw into the ‘rights’ bag, as we saw this summer with one member putting forward a bill for the ‘right’ to a summer holiday.

Secondly, where one ‘right’ is enforced, another will be violated. Take airport scanners. In the UK we will soon be required to do a full body scan without a pat down option if a passenger is selected for screening. If we refuse, we lose our right to fly. Flying is not a right, but in a free society a bought service. We choose this service based on how safe they make it, the food, seat comfort, etc. The individual airlines in turn should be able to provide the necessary security as they see fit.

Decency dictates that appearing nude to a stranger while being bombarded with ionizing radiation would warrant another method more valid. But despite the unusual move by the EU to direct its member states not to use this type of scanner, the UK is going ahead because of the significant terror threats we face and our ‘rights’ be damned.

In a free society, airlines should be able to choose their methods of security and market them accordingly. Israeli airline EL AL would be the first port of call for consultation as they have cornered the market in determining who poses a threat by psychological profiling, suspect terrorist intelligence and good old fashioned common sense backed by gun wielding marshals on board. Now, that’s a service I would gladly pay for and relax on the flight.

And the rest who still feel violated? Since the majority of terrorists taking to the skies these days are Islamofacists, we could create flights based on Imam-defined rules of safety where Muslims might feel happier about not being profiled. The market would operate freely, we all have our dignity and ‘rights’ intact and we would see who did the better business. Similarly, a free market health care system weeds out the good hospitals from the bad and the impetus to decency of the individual would see to the needs of the truly destitute.

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