David Jones, MP

I spent a little time this evening trawling through the website of the LaRouche Political Action Committee.  And what a revelation it was!

I confess I had been somewhat hurt when I read that the Committee considered the NHS to be “genocidal” and “Nazi”, which is what prompted me to compose my last post.  However, I had clearly endowed the LaRouche PAC with considerably more credibility than it merits.  Because it is completely, breathtakingly, gob-smackingly, heroically bonkers.

The LaRouche people, you see, are quite convinced that not only are we British guilty of running a health service designed on Soylent Green lines, but we are also undisputed world champions in the state-sponsored terrorism stakes.

Take, for instance, the following extract from yesterday’s post:

For Opportunistic Reasons, The British May Assassinate President Obama

August 13, 2003 (LPAC)- “I am concerned of the fear that the British, for their own opportunistic reasons, probably are considering arranging the assassination of the current President of the United States,” Lyndon LaRouche said today. “After all, he’s only a poker chip on the global historical playing table, and they will banish him if they think it’s convenient for them at this time. They may let him linger on for a while, build up some more steam around him, so that when he really goes down, it has a bigger effect.”

You may wish to re-read that, in order fully to absorb its sheer pottiness.  Better still, visit the website, because, believe me, there’s considerably more.

Now all this, under normal circumstances, would be highly entertaining.  You might even feel inclined to add the site to your Favourites list, to make it easier to log in and check out its Conspiracy of the Day.

However, these are not normal circumstances; America is engaged in a hugely important debate about healthcare provision.  It should be conducted coolly, carefully and rationally.  But for some reason that I find hard to follow, raftloads of otherwise sensible US citizens seem to have accepted the crass, hysterical propaganda of the LaRouche PAC and its crazy characterisation of the British NHS as the creation of genocidal neo-Nazis.

Which I think is, by any standards, a matter of considerable concern.

In the United States, battle is fiercely raging over President Obama’s plans to reform the healthcare system, which have attracted  pretty vitriolic criticism from certain quarters.  The influential Lyndon LaRouche movement has even taken to calling Obama’s proposals “Nazi” and to portraying the president as Hitler.

LaRouche, indeed, is calling much of the agenda in the debate, which is becoming increasingly hysterical, and in which the British NHS is being demonised as a “genocidal” model of healthcare to which Obama aspires.  Here is a flavour of the sort of stuff that LaRouche is putting out:

Want to know what to expect if the Obama team rams through its Nazi healthcare policy? Take a look at the “guidance” which Britain’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) provides to the National Health Service (NHS), on who should live or die…

This is the same NICE that the fascist economists advising President Obama think is a great model for a “reformed” U.S. healthcare system. Don’t be fooled by the buzzwords: “cost-effectiveness” or “quality adjusted life year” (QALY). 

There is nothing that distinguishes NICE’s actions from Adolf Hitler’s October, 1939 declaration that there are lives “not worthy to be lived,” which launched the Nazi euthanasia and mass murder program. One commentator on the case remarked, “it all boils down to two concepts that are increasingly intertwined in modern bioethics theory and practice. First is the so-called quality-of-life ethic that presumes to judge the worth of patients’ lives according to their mental and physical capacities. Under this view, doctors or bioethicists may judge a life to be of such low quality that it is not worthy extending, irrespective of the patients’ wishes.”

Now, no one, not even its strongest adherents, would claim that the NHS is perfect; I certainly wouldn’t.  Furthermore, some of NICE’s decisions have been questionable and have attracted considerable criticism from many quarters, myself included.  However, my own experience has been that, when you really need it, the NHS is a godsend.

My experience of US healthcare, however, has been less impressive.  Some years ago, on a family visit to California, my then two year-old son fell and cut his head open in a town called San Luis Obispo.  We were referred by the hotel staff to a local clinic, where we rushed him, wrapped in a towel, his wound pumping blood.  On arrival at the clinic, before we were even allowed to see a doctor, I was required to give a swipe of my credit card.

The wound was stitched and we were told that the sutures had to be removed a week later.  The following week, we were in Los Angeles and telephoned the local GP surgery to try to make an appointment for what appeared to be a straightforward medical process.  We were told that the doctor couldn’t deal with it because “he didn’t carry paediatric insurance”.  We rang a number of other surgeries, only to be told the same.  In the end, we were obliged to visit the A&E department of a large children’s hospital where, again, my credit card had to be produced before anyone would look at my son.

My experience may or may not be typical; however, I don’t believe that any American visitor to Britain would receive such treatment if his two year-old child needed urgent medical care. 

Perhaps Mr Lyndon LaRouche would like to give that some consideration the next time he feels like calling us Nazis.