Hospitals are run like businesses here... It's all about maximizing profits. That's what motivates for example, us adding a heart center recently, its a high profit industry. It's not that our region needed another one.
I think he's right, tbh. Treating people as though they are making a shopping choice absolves the community from its social responsibility. Orwell understood the power of shaping attitudes and behaviour by restricting and manipulating language, which is why I'm such an arse about it. In the US, health care is not an entitlement brought about by being a member of society, but a commodity to be purchased. Thatcher set the ball rolling down that particular slippery slope here as well, because she and her acolytes believe that everything is subservient to the pursuit of wealth.
I was brought up on John Wayne films. As a child the first thing I remember wanting to be 'when I grew up' was a cowboy - it's never left me.
