While the political struggle over universal health care continues here in America, the deleterious effects of it have reared their heads again just across the border in Canada.
The Maraachli family of Ontario, Canada, was able to move their one-year-old, terminally ill son to St. Louis thanks to the anti-abortion group, Priests for Life, after a fruitless struggle with the Canadian health-care system. Baby Jospeh, after a medical review in St. Louis, will now undergo the procedure, but it’s an additional sacrifice the family and the boy sould have never had to undergo.
The family’s son, Joseph, is dying, and will die. The boy is currently in a vegetative state and was to be transferred to the family’s home where he would be removed from life support.
The family, however, requested a tracheotomy to be performed on their son, so that he would die a more comfortable death, instead of the choking and gurgling that would likely accompany simply removing the breathing tube. The request was refused because the procedure isn’t necessary, medically speaking.
This is the really scary part of state mandated and run health care: it’s controlled by the state—all of it. They pay for it. (Well, you do, of course, through heavy taxes, but that’s just a formality). They run it. They, apparently, decide who dies when.
A lot of rhetoric about compassion and charity gets bandied about when talking about universal health care. “What about the poor people?” “Health care shouldn’t only be for the rich.” But now we see the flip side.
What constitutes health care—not to mention mercy—under state run health systems lies solely in the government’s hands. A tracheotomy is not “medically necessary,” therefore it will not be performed…never mind that it’s a relatively simple, relatively inexpensive procedure; never mind that it could bring a calmer death to a young boy, or fulfill the wishes of a long-suffering family. It’s not up to them, apparently.
Even further, by leaving for an American hospital in St. Louis (via the support of Priests for Life), the Maraachlis defied a court order to have their son removed from life support. They are technically in violation of Canadian law, because a judge and a panel of bureaucrats and doctors decided that it was time for their son to die.
And that’s in the so-called compassionate and charitable system of health care.
