Charlie and the single-payer system

Since the Republican majority in Congress gave up repealing Obamacare to go hide in the corner, the Democrats have seen an opportunity to not only celebrate the previous administration’s fraud-riddled signature “accomplishment,” but to build on it. While his majority colleagues reneged on the promise on which most of them got elected, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer explained on ABC’s “This Week” with ex-Clinton stooge George Stephanopolous, so-called “single-payer” (read: government-controlled) is “on the table.”

Schumer’s fellow New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand called for “Medicare for all.” Senator Kamala Harris (D-Californistan), widely rumored to be in the running for the 2020 crown, said “I’m completely in support of single payer.” Of course, none of these leading lights, all of whom promised Obamacare would cure what ails America, can actually explain how a government takeover of the doctor’s office would benefit anyone but themselves.

The thing is, we already know what single-payer looks like. Our special friends in the United Kingdom sport the National Health Service (NHS), much the same system the Democrats insist will make Americans all healthier, wealthier and wiser (except for those last two). Like all countries in which the healthcare of the people is administered by the government, serious illnesses can be met with indifference and even death.

Pity poor Charlie Gard, who learned about fatal indifference the hard way. Charlie was born with a condition called Mitohondrial DNA Depletion Syndrome (MDDA). MDDA is one of those brutal, kid-centric diseases that can make even the most ardent atheist admit that maybe there is a God, because there’s certainly a devil. The little tyke’s odds of making it to kindergarten, much less adulthood, wavered somewhere between “it would take a miracle,” and “it would take an actual miracle.” Recognizing this, the NHS reached a decision: give up. They wanted to remove the child from all but palliative care and send Charlie to the great beyond. His parents, being normal human parents, objected to the idea of disposing of their son like a “crunchy” baby at a Planned Parenthood “clinic.”

With a child’s life at stake, Connie Yates and Chris Gard found themselves fighting a war in which their infant son’s disease called in reinforcements in the form of their own government’s single-payer system. They fought their way up and down the court system, even finding themselves facing additional fire from a “special guardian” appointed by the state to represent little Charlie’s interests, making clear the state felt his interests didn’t include “being alive.”

The state, abetted by the “special guardian’s” assent, blocked Charlie’s parents’ attempts to seek experimental treatments for their son. Appeal after appeal was denied, even offers of assistance from parties as disparate as the president of the United States and Pope Francis were declined, all in the name of Charlie’s “best interests.” Eventually, any hope of treatment for Charlie faded away, the same state which killed every attempt by the Gards to keep their son alive, delivered the final insult — refusing to let the family take their son home to die.

On Monday, the state won. Charlie’s parents withdrew their last appeals. Even though his parents were likely banking on a miracle, the state ensured no miracle would ever find them.

Charlie will die, and though his hopes were never better than dim, single-payer healthcare ensured they were snuffed out for good. The single-payer system, which gladly covers such medical emergencies as “gender reassignment” surgery and (of course) abortion, had nary a smile for poor Charlie. As she was marched out of a courtroom Wednesday afternoon, Charlie’s mother wailed “I hope you are happy with yourselves… What if this was your child?” Sorry, Ms. Yates. Single-payer healthcare is socialism… and socialism doesn’t care, either way.

— Ben Crystal

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