And you wonder why old people are opposed to Obamacare...

...maybe they've been looking around to see how this whole government-run-health-care thing works in other places.

For example, note this bit: "And, as the Patients Association report points out, most of these stories are about old people."

Or this:

Poor basic hygiene was a factor in the recent disaster at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust hospital where at least 400 patients died needlessly; the official report of 2007 blamed “shocking and appalling” standards of care. But two years on, it emerged earlier this year that 10 NHS health trusts have even worse death rates than Mid Staffordshire had.

There's this, of course, but then the fact that liberals hate monopolies in business but love it in government is something nobody who has paid attention to politics for a single day at any time in the past seventy years could have failed to notice:

One of the problems is that the NHS is a monopoly — any patient knows there is nowhere else to be treated and any nurse or doctor brave enough to blow the whistle runs the risk of never working in medicine again; there is no alternative to the state medical monolith.

See, the thing that sucks if you're a liberal and 49% of the people in the country don't like doing it your way, and you're having to compete in the free market where people don't have to give you their money unless they personally think you deserve it, is that you only have a market with 51% of the people...'cause you can't take the 49%'s money without their permission, and since you don't have a monopoly they can give their money to somebody else, and, to be blunt, they think you're a moron and haven't the slightest intention of giving you their money. Every private businessman without a monopoly has to deal with this every day; it's called "customer satisfaction" and without it you go out of business. (This is why businesses that have enough money to spend on lobbyists -- such as big insurance companies -- spend that money urging legislators to regulate their industry "for the good of the public" and thus raise entrance costs enough to keep the small players out and protect the big guys' monopoly, the fostering of exploitative monopolies being the primary economic effect of government regulation.)

But if you're a liberal, you don't have to worry about satisfying the 49%. You just have to round up the 51% to outvote them -- and then you can say to the other 49%, "Screw what you want, hand over your money," with all the practically irresistible power of the state to back you up. So what if the Republican down the street thinks you're a moron and thinks that you will do a terrible job of taking care of his health and the health of the homeless guy down the street? So what if he wants to make his own health care decision with his own doctor rather than having you decide what decisions he's allowed to make? So what if he thinks the local Catholic hospital will do a vastly better job of caring for the homeless guy than will your army of bureaucrats and he wants to give his charity-for-the-homeless-guy money to the hospital rather than to you? Too bad for him; he'll damned well give you the money whether he likes it or not -- because you and your fellow Fifty-One-Percenters voted yourselves a monopoly on health care.

Liberalism is the quintessentially anti-democratic political philosophy, though it doesn't perceive itself that way. It is the free market that is truly democratic: my dollar is worth as much as yours, and I get to vote with it. If 80% of us like HEB and 20% of us like Randall's, then HEB will get 80% of the money and Randall's will get 20% -- but I, Mr. Randall's Lover, will still get to spend my money at Randall's. If HEB's customer satisfaction drops to 60%, then the voting shifts to 60% HEB and 40% Randall's...and so do the dollars. If Randall's pulls ahead 51% to 49%, then the money shifts accordingly -- but the almost-half-the-population that prefers HEB, still gets to go to HEB, and Randall's won't get those people's money until it finds a way to make them happy.

But in politics, if you're in the 49%, you're hosed. There were all kinds of liberals who hated having Dubya as President. I personally was no fan of Dubya; I have litte or no respect for McCain; and I got stuck with Obama. But if you are in the 49%, your vote doesn't count, and your money goes to the 51%.

Do you see what I mean? Here's how it works in the private sector for me, Mr. Randall's Lover.

Voting is running 80% / 20%: I get to shop at Randall's.
Voting is running 60% / 40%: I get to shop at Randall's.
Voting is running 49% / 51%: I get to shop at Randall's.
Voting flips back to 51% / 49%: I get to shop at Randall's.
Voting flips back again to 49% / 51%: I get to shop at Randall's.
Some guy opens a new store called Whole Foods and I, along with 5% of my fellow Americans, discover that it is awesomely better than either Randall's or HEB: I get to shop at Whole Foods.

Noticing a theme there, are we? But now what if the private sector worked like the "democratic process" beloved by liberals?

Voting is running 80% / 20%: I have to shop at HEB.
Voting is running 60% / 40%: I have to shop at HEB.
Voting is running 49% / 51%: Yay, I get to shop at Randall's!
Voting flips back to 51% / 49%: [sigh] I have to shop at HEB again.
Voting flips back again to 49% / 51%: Yay, I get to shop at Randall's again!
Some guy opens a new store called Whole Foods and I, along with 5% of my fellow Americans, discover...oh, wait, never mind, he's not allowed to open it because he doesn't have 50% of the vote yet.

You see, anybody who attempts to take any part of life that is currently in the private sector, and move it into the public sector, is an essentially anti-democratic person -- because he is trying to move that part of life out of the world where every person's dollar counts, and move it into the world where your vote is worthless unless you're part of the biggest mob.

Liberalism: always looking out for the little guy...

P.S. (I admit I'm being deliberately provocative here to make my point...if you want to say in the comments that the free market isn't democratic because rich people have more dollars than poor people do, fire away. But it's not going to change the primary points I'm making in the post, since "liberalism is anti-democratic" isn't really the main point.)