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The Jax Files is an interactive, quick-hitting blog devoted to any and all things Pasco, whether whole-heartedly, tangentially or merely psychologically.

Tom Jackson:

Tom Jackson is in a 12-step program for recovering sports writers; as part of his rehabilitation, he writes a column centered on the people, politics, passions and peculiarities of Pasco County. Email

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Pasco County News | Breaking News

Tales from where health care is a ‘fundamental right’

Posted Oct 8, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 8, 2009 at 05:47 PM

Just so you know the inevitable trajectory (and tragedy) of a fulfillment of the fundamental right to health care claimed in the post below, here’s a collection of socialized medicine nightmares from Great Britain, where they practice the theory of fundamental rights (from the ever-reliable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web Today”):

The hits just keep on coming. “A jobsworth ambulance boss refused to allow his staff to enter six inches of water to treat a man with a broken back—because it breached heath [sic] and safety,” reports London’s Daily Mail:

[Bystanders] were stunned when a paramedic arrived and refused his pleading staff to enter the water—because they weren’t trained to deal with water rescues.

They had to slide a spinal board under him themselves and carry him to ambulancemen, who were stood [sic] on the bank just 6 feet away.

One onlooker said: “The paramedic wouldn’t treat him.

“Two colleagues arrived in an ambulance but he stood in their way and told them, ‘I’m incident commander—you aren’t getting into the water.”

The good thing about this is we learned a new word: Jobsworth is a Britishism that means someone who goes by the book in order to be unhelpful.

Then there is this report from the Sun:

This crippled plumber horribly broke his arm TEN months ago and is still waiting for surgery to repair it.

Torron Eeles busted his left humerus bone leaving it grotesquely out of shape when he fell down stairs.

Today he slammed the NHS for “unacceptable” delays—claiming they have cancelled FOUR separate operations.

His arm hangs limply by his side meaning Torron cannot work for a living and now faces the prospect of losing his home.

The story includes a photo of Eeles’s grotesquely twisted arm. Suffice it to say that his humerus is not humorous.

The Daily Mail reports that “thousands of NHS patients with previously untreatable rheumatoid arthritis could be denied a new ‘smart’ drug to ease their agony because it is too expensive. ... The drug has been licensed throughout Europe, but the cost has led the Government’s rationing body to issue a preliminary rejection of its use by NHS patients in England.”

The Courier of Dundee, Scotland, reports that Ninewells Hospital has become something of a menagerie:

Bats were seen on the general medical Ward 6 on September 4, and on the surgical Ward 9 five days later.

The shocking revelation is contained in a breakdown of incidents of pests over the last year in Tayside hospitals obtained under Freedom of Information legislation.

It shows that between October last year and this September pest controllers were called to NHS Tayside hospital premises on 462 occasions to deal with rats, mice, seagulls, dead birds and even a dead rabbit.

The majority of incidents involved insects including, ants, flies, cockroaches, wasps, silverfish, beetles and even hornets.

Now for the good news. According to former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”