Private Healthcare: Insurers Demand American Women Be Sterilised

I found this extremely chilling clip on youtube. It’s protesting against the way American women have been told by their medical insurers that the are ineligible for medical insurance after giving birth by caesarean section. The only way the insurance companies were willing to insure them was if they were sterilised.

Clearly, this is a grossly immoral attack on women’s reproductive rights over their own body. But it’s not one you hear about over this side of the Atlantic.

It does, however, make sense of some of the hysterical fearmongering the Repugs have tried to stir up against Obamacare and socialised medicine in general. The attitude of the Republicans is that socialised medicine was wrong, because of the Nazis and eugenics. Right at the beginning of Obama’s administration, Sarah Palin was screaming about how she didn’t want socialised medicine in America, because she didn’t want her children facing ‘death panels’. The idea seemed to be that if American had state-funded medical care for everyone, the state would also go to extreme lengths to ensure that medical funding ensured the best possible result. And that would mean the culling of the unfit and infirm.

Many Americans seem to have actually believed this. The BBC sent one of their reporters to cover a Tea Party protest against Obamacare. One of the protesters, an older man, came up to the camera crew and shouted ‘Your healthcare system stinks!’ He then looked genuinely hurt and surprised when the Beeb’s reported calmly asked him what he meant, as though he really couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly challenge his views. He seemed never to have even considered the possibility that he could be wrong, and was shaken just by the suggestion of it.

More recently, Sarah Palin and her supporters have taken to screaming that Obamacare means that the government will limit you to only having one baby.

I’ve also come across arguments by Libertarians against the NHS on the grounds that state medical care effectively extends state control over your body, and so doctors can order you to give up smoking, exercise and so on with the threat that they will remove your health care.

This video shows that this is actually all projection. It’s really what American medical insurers are doing to those unlucky enough to have policies with them. It’s Palin, the Tea Party and the other Republican exploiters and maniacs trying to divert attention from the failings and expanding power of the medical insurers over their customers’ bodies, by hollering that it’s the reality of state medical care.

It also has profound implications in Britain. The Fuhrage has stated that he wishes to replace the NHS with an insurance-funded system. His second in command, Paul Nuttall, has also said that he wants the NHS sold off. So have a whole slew of Tories, including Andrew Lansley, the current health minister.

This is what we will get, if Britain goes down that road. And 92 Tory and Lib Dem MPs have links with private healthcare companies, and are hoping we do.

As for the Nazis and medical care, the Nazis did not introduce state medicine, or state funded medicine. Far from it. German workers had enjoyed state medical insurance after it was introduced by Bismarck in 1875. The German people therefore had enjoyed over half a century of state-funded medical treatment before the Nazis took power in 1932/3. So like much of the Repug’s propaganda, it’s not only bonkers, it’s also factually wrong.

Tags: 'Death Panels', BBC, Bismarck, Caesarian Sections, Eugenics, Lib-Dems, Medical Insurance, Nigel Farage, Obamacare, Paul Nuttall, Private Healthcare, Republican Party, Sarah Palin, Sterilisation, Tea Party, The Conservatives, UKIP