In 2008 Patrick Swayze was treated with an advanced medical tool called a “CyberKnife.” It helped add months to his life as he tried to beat the cancer that was consuming him. But, Swayze wasn’t the only American with the good fortune to have this highly advanced medical technology available to him. In fact, there are 100 such machines across the United States. From California, to Minnesota, to Illinois and Washington D.C. Americans currently have the luxury of these wonderful new devices.

Sadly, Britons are not so lucky. There are two CyberKnife machines in the Britain, but they aren’t going to do anyone in the country’s socialist healthcare system any good because despite how successful these machines are British authorities won’t allow them to be used on patients.

Despite that the Mount Vernon cancer hospital in London is part of the National Health Services, despite that they spent £3m to purchase the machine, and quite despite the praise the machines receive in the U.S. and throughout the world, British NHS authorities won’t let NHS doctors use the machine on their patients.

Sadly, these heartless, uncaring socialist healthcare officials are uninterested in helping the estimated 10,000 British patients a year that could benefit from use of the CyberKnife. And why is this? Why, it’s because the treatments are expensive, of course.

You see money is far, far more important to Britain’s socialist healthcare system then patients.

As I said above, the U.S. is lucky to have many of these machines on our shores. In fact we have 100 of the 150 machines world-wide, all available for anyone that needs them. But this happy situation will not survive the implementation of America’s own socialist healthcare system when it institutes its rationing rules as the English have done. Sooner rather than later advanced tools like the CyberKnife will be eschewed as too expensive by Obamacre bean counters and such advanced technology will dwindle and wither away despite the lives it could save.

This is what is meant when it is said that Obamacare features death panels. After all, a socialist healthcare system that won’t pay for advanced technology because it’s just too darn expensive — just as is happening right now in England — is a defacto death panel.

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According to AP reports, “Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama’s health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion.”  Reportedly, 60 leaders of religious orders sent lawmakers a letter pleading with them to pass the Senate healthcare bill.

The AP clearly has not noticed the virtual ongoing war within the Catholic Church, especially with regards to government responsibility as opposed to private/church responsibility.  In no sphere is this internal war more evident than when it comes to matters involving the Church’s Doctrine on Social Justice.

The Doctrines on Social Justice are, perhaps, the most misunderstood and lied-about facets of the Catholic faith.  Just about everyone in public life, including even the majority of Catholics themselves, completely ignore the fundamentals of Social Justice teaching.  They summarily conclude that Social Justice is a synonym for socialist redistributive policies, which seek to equalize material outcomes for all.  I call this the Kumbayah Fallacy.

These nuns have fallen hook, line and sinker for the Kumbayah Fallacy.  Right along with all the liberation theologians, who have shamefully wrapped Marxist doctrine around the cross of Christ for decades.

This mingling of socialism with Christianity makes a diabolical mockery of the Church’s genuine Social Doctrine, as delineated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  In fact, the Catholic Church explicitly rebukes all forms of “communism” and “socialism” right there in plain sight in the Catechism.  While the Church also condemns completely unfettered capitalism, with no regulations whatsoever, She saves most condemnation for the Marxist doctrines, which attempt to regulate the economy “solely by centralized planners,” as this “perverts the basis of social bonds” between human beings.

While President Obama has made wide use of his claim to fighting for Social Justice, especially with his zeal towards a government takeover of our healthcare system, he has utterly ignored the natural – fully predictable – unintended consequences of his attempt to reorder the best medical delivery system the world has ever created.

In fact, this reordering of the American medical delivery system to suit the whims of socialist reformers, President Obama is ensuring a genuine Social Justice nightmare for the whole world.

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Many advocates of health-care reform are admirers of Canada’s state-run, no-opt-out, single-payer system. Indeed, in 2003, President Barack Obama voiced enthusiasm for such a health-care program.

Proponents of Canadian-style health care should meet Cheryl Baxter, a Canadian citizen who waited years for hip-replacement surgery, only to be told that her operation would not happen any time soon. Instead of waiting, Baxter did what an increasing number of Canadians are doing: She flew to a clinic in the United States, paid out of pocket, and had a life-altering surgery in a matter of weeks rather than years.

Baxter’s experience doesn’t just throw damning light on Canadian health care. The sort of clinic she went to in Oklahoma suggests a different way of delivering health care in the United States, too: A simple fee-for-service
model in which providers openly advertise their prices, service, and reputation. Rather than a frustrating, complicated mess of intermediaries such as employers and insurance companies, U.S. health-care reformers should think about bringing medicine into line with the same dynamics that help deliver great service at great prices throughout most other parts of the economy.

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As health care reform inches closer to reality, a massively important question becomes even more pressing: Will ObamaCare kill the sorts of medical innovation that makes the United States the leader in bringing new treatments, technology, and procedures to market?

“America is the only industrialized nation that doesn’t have a national health plan,” says Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), former Gov. Howard Dean (D-Vt.), and countless others who want the United States government to guarantee health coverage to all.

Protesters at a recent rally in downtown Los Angeles demanded universal coverage. They told Reason.tv that America is a cruel land where profits come before people.

“It’s disgusting!” said one woman. “There should be no profits in health care!” What about those who argue that profits drive medical innovation? “I think that’s kind of sick,” declared another protester, who wants the U.S. to be more like Canada, where government policy keeps drug prices, and drug company profits, lower than in America.

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With Democratic support coalescing around Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-Mt.) health care reform proposal, passage of a comprehensive overhaul now appears more likely than ever.  Opponents had their summer of protests.  But, Democrats have shown a renewed sense of energy since discrediting Sarah Palin’s “death panels” and Sen. Charles Grassley’s claim that ObamaCare would “pull the plug on grandma.” Still, while those charges may have been a little overwrought, there is plenty to be concerned about with the Democratic health reform effort.

As I explain in a new Competitive Enterprise Institute paper, “A Cure Worse than the Disease: Obama Care Won’t Cut Costs, But May Cut Quality,” most of the alleged cost-cutting measures in the Baucus bill merely shift costs from the federal government onto the states or private payers, without affecting long-term health care inflation.  The only measures that could reduce the annual rate of growth in health care costs would erect government barriers between patients and their doctors, while jeopardizing long-term medical innovation.

Skeptics have made hay arguing that the so-called Sustainable Growth Rate can’t be counted on to cut $245-billion in Medicare spending. But Senate Finance Committee negotiators have designed a Medicare Commission—what the White House previously called an Independent Medicare Advisory Commission—to make similar cuts in physician and hospital payment rates in a more opaque way.

In an April New York Times interview, President Obama suggested that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost…the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives.”  That’s not exactly a death panel roving the country to pull the plug on innocent grandmas who’ve survived past their sell-by dates, but the effects could be equally pernicious.

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