Readers Write: British baby proves single-payer’s ills

The Island Now

As the deadline to submit a letter to the editor approaches, the fate of an 11-month old baby in Great Britain is still undecided.

Baby Charlie Gard is suffering from an extremely rare but fatal, genetic condition, mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. It causes muscle weakness and loss of motor skills that ultimately leads to death.

That this will happen eventually is not the issue.

Many months ago, Charlie was having trouble lifting his head and the diagnosis was confirmed.

His parents discovered there was an experimental treatment available in the United States and they raised the funds to cover the cost of the treatment and medical transport to the hospital here.

They also requested from the British hospital that at a last resort they be allowed to bring Charlie home to die, surrounded by his family.

The hospital, the British courts and the highest court of the European Union denied the parents’ requests.

What appears on the surface to be a case of one extremely ill child is not merely that.

Charlie’s mother and father were denied their parental rights to make a decision they thought to be in the best interest of their child.

This heartbreaking case is not about one baby and his parents.

The issue is control.

Who gets to make the decision for a child? Parents or bureaucrats?

Who gets to decide when someone will die?

The hospital wanted to remove this baby’s respirator which prompted the appeals to the British courts.

This is the theft perpetrated by the socialist, single-payer health care system in Britain.

The theft of parental rights by a system that refuses to be seen as a failure, a failure to control the lives of everyone in their health care system.

Its tentacles spread to control the lives of everyone, to decide or deny treatment for any number reasons, such as age, previous medical therapies given, or any other reason that the system can justify.

This is not a ‘hope for a miracle’ story with a dream ending.

Bureaucrats decided this baby should die. That is the stark truth.

They decided it should have happened months ago. The parents wanted to fight for their baby’s life.

We, as voters, must demand answers from our politicians. Do they support a single-payer government system? If so, why?

And would they subject themselves and their family to single-payer?

Could the case of baby Charlie and his parents happen here? After reading the columns of two of this paper’s regular contributors, Ms. Rubin and Ms. Confino, I am of the opinion that these aspiring fascists already embrace this poisonous system.

Two more notes: Please do not conflate the issue of parental rights with the issue of vaccinating your children.

Vaccination is a public health issue, not a parental rights issue.

There is currently another appeal pending in baby Charlie’s case after the U.S. and the Vatican intervened on behalf of this baby.

A US doctor, a specialist in this type of neurological disorder will be examining baby Charlie this week.

A decision may be forthcoming by Friday, the publication date of this article.

Lauren Block

Manhasset 

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