Baby Alfie, the Latest Victim of Omnipotent Government

This article was originally published by Ron Paul at Ron Paul Institute

Twenty-three-month-old Alfie Evans, passed away in a British hospital on Saturday. While the official cause of death was a degenerative brain disease, Alfie may have been murdered by the British health system and the British high court. Doctors at the hospital treating Alfie decided to remove his life support, against the wishes of Alfie’s parents. The high court not only upheld the doctors’ authority to override the parents’ wishes, it refused to allow the parents to take Alfie abroad for treatment.

In upholding the government’s authority to substitute its judgment for that of Alfie’s parents, the high court is following in the footsteps of authoritarians throughout history. Ever since Plato, supporters of big government have sought to put government in charge of raising children. The authoritarianism of a system where “experts” can override parents is underscored by a police warning that they were “monitoring” social media posts regarding Alfie.

Alfie’s case is not just an example of the dangers of allowing government to usurp parental authority or the failures of socialized medicine. It shows the logical result of the widespread acceptance of the idea that rights are mere privileges bestowed by government. It follows from this idea that rights can be taken away whenever demanded by government officials or the popular will.

Of course, most western politicians deny they believe rights come from government. They instead claim that government must place “reasonable” limits on rights to advance important policy goals, such as limiting the right to free speech to protect certain groups from hate speech, or limiting property rights to promote economic equality. But, a right by its very nature cannot be limited or abolished and still be a right.

This disdain for a true understanding of rights is found among both liberals and conservatives. Both support a welfare-warfare state funded via the theft of income taxes and the indirect theft of inflation. Both support jailing people for nonviolent actions like drinking raw milk. Many politicians, regardless of ideology, support restrictions on parental rights such as mandatory vaccination laws.

While claiming to support the right to life, most modern liberals not only support legalized abortion, they want to force pro-lifers to fund abortion providers. Both the right-wing neocons and left-wing humanitarian interventionists dismiss the innocents killed in US military actions as inconsequential “collateral damage.”

America’s Founding Fathers rejected the idea that rights come from government. They instead embraced the view that rights are either granted by the creator or are a basic attribute of humanity.

Since rights do not come from government, government has no more legitimate authority to violate our rights than does a private individual. Thus, if an individual cannot use force to make you help others, neither can the government. If an individual cannot use force to stop you from gambling online or telling un-PC jokes, neither can the government. If an individual cannot use force to stop parents from seeking medical treatment for their child, neither can the government.

Widespread acceptance of natural rights and the principle of nonaggression that flows from natural rights is key to obtaining and maintaining a free society. Thus, educating people in the benefits of free markets, individual liberty, and a foreign policy of peace and free trade is key to protecting future Alfie Evanses, and other victims of the welfare-warfare state, as well as to restoring respect for the moral principles of liberty among a critical mass of the people.

Baby Alfie’s Case Proves Kidnapping & Child Abuse Are Allowed When Gov’t Calls it ‘Health Care’

If parents deprived their children of food and water until they died, they would be charged with child abuse. But when the state does it, it is called health care.

The post Baby Alfie’s Case Proves Kidnapping & Child Abuse Are Allowed When Gov’t Calls it ‘Health Care’ appeared first on The Free Thought Project.

Why Is An Appendectomy In The United States 10 Times More Expensive Than An Appendectomy In Mexico?

This report was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse

This is what can happen when you go to a socialized healthcare system. A lot of people out there believe that the United States has a free market healthcare system, but that is actually not true. The percentage of the population that receives government-subsidized healthcare is rapidly approaching 50 percent, and the healthcare industry may be the most heavily regulated sector of the entire U.S. economy. Every year the rules, red tape and regulations seem to get even worse, and every year health insurance premiums rise much faster than the overall rate of inflation. If we don’t start applying free market principles and start getting healthcare costs under control, our entire healthcare system could very easily implode.

I would like to share with you an excerpt from an article by former DEA agent David Hathaway. According to Hathaway, the average cost for an appendectomy in the United States is $33,000…

My son had an attack of appendicitis late Saturday night. I knew that the Obamacare inflated prices for surgery in the U.S. would be ridiculous and that the service would likely be impersonal, involve long waits, and be nerve-wracking. I have friends in the medical field so I inquired just for grins. The price for the latest routine appendectomy in my area was, my jaw dropped, $43,000. I read on-line that the average cost for an appendectomy in the U.S. is $33,000. I am not near some of the great direct-pay medical facilities in the U.S. like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, but I am near Mexico. I chose that option since I have often utilized foreign medical and dental facilities in the past and find the service and prices to be outstanding.

You can buy a very nice brand new car for $33,000.

How in the world did we get to the point where costs have escalated so far out of control? Should performing an appendectomy really be this expensive?

I can imagine that some of my readers may be thinking that the quality of care down in Mexico is much lower, but this is actually not the case at all. Here is more from David Hathaway…

My son was checked into a private room with private bath and satellite TV awaiting his surgery. The surgical staff was prepped and ready to start within an hour-and-a half of our arrival. The appendix was ruptured, so extra precautions were taken to clean and flush the abdominal cavity. Since the appendix was ruptured, the chief surgeon said that my son should stay two days to receive intravenous antibiotics to prevent the development of peritonitis.

The surgery was a success, and David’s son did stay in the hospital for two full days in order to receive the antibiotics that the doctor suggested.

But despite the extra time, the bill for the appendectomy was still less than 10 percent of what it would have been if the appendectomy had been performed in the United States…

The hospital stay was for 48 hours in a private room where my wife was allowed to spend the nights with my son sleeping on a couch in his room. This cost would have been significantly less if we hadn’t incurred emergency fees and if the appendectomy had not involved complications which required a longer stay and more medication. Despite all that, I though the total price of $2,830 dollars was very reasonable.

So why can’t we have hospitals like that on our side of the border?

This is yet another example that shows that Obamacare has got to go and that we need to get government out of the healthcare business.

We once had the greatest healthcare system in the history of the world, and we can do it again if we will just return to free market principles. Elections really matter, and we simply cannot allow the Democrats and the establishment Republicans to take us even further down the road of socialized medicine.

They have already turned our once great healthcare system into a giant disaster zone, and we need to show them the door before they can do even more damage.

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream. 

If you want to know what is coming and what you can do to prepare, read his latest book Get Prepared Now!: Why A Great Crisis Is Coming.

Baby Death Panel: Court Rules Baby Must Die, Even Though Parents Can Pay Out of Pocket

When the parents of 10-month-old Charlie Gard raised more than £1.3 million in an attempt to save their critically ill son, they had no idea that the European Court of Human Rights would be the only thing standing in the way of pursuing further treatment.

Gard suffers from mitochondrial depletion syndrome, a rare genetic condition that has caused serious brain damage. After British doctors determined that he was beyond saving and should “die with dignity,” Gard’s parents appealed to both the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court and the ECHR in France, and received the same answer.

Chris Gard and Connie Yates set up a GoFundMe account for their son, in which they explained that because Charlie is the 16^th person in the world to have ever been diagnosed with the condition, they have found an experimental treatment that is only available in the United States.

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“Charlies condition is caused by a disruption in the mitochondria, the part of the cell that provides energy to his muscles, kidneys and brain. There is a new treatment available which is a nucleoside bypass therapy, which could potentially repair Charlie’s mtDNA and help it synthase again by giving him the naturally occurring compounds that his body isn’t able to produce. It’s oral medication so nothing invasive or harmful. We are running out of precious time with our baby, he can’t have this treatment in the UK so our only hope now is to get Charlie to America.”

Despite the fact that Charlie Gard’s parents succeeded in raising more than the £1.3 million they were seeking, in an attempt to pay out of pocket for their son to receive treatment in the U.S., the UK’s healthcare system left the ultimate decision up to the government.

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The European Court of Human Rights released a statement that not only rejected the appeal to let Gard’s parents seek out additional treatment independent of state-funded healthcare, but also stated that it is lawful for Gard’s doctors to take him off of life support when they choose.

“The decision is final,” The statement said. “The domestic courts concluded that it would be lawful for the hospital to withdraw life sustaining treatment because it was likely that Charlie would suffer significant harm if his present suffering was prolonged without any realistic prospect of improvement, and the experimental therapy would be of no effective benefit.”

During the UK Supreme Court hearing, Gard family lawyer Richard Gordon QC raised the question of the level of involvement the government should have in determining a child’s right to live, as well as the rights of parents to seek alternative treatment that could save their child.

“The issue is whether the state has the power to intrude on decisions the parents have made in order to mandate that child’s death before it might come to an end,” Gordon said. “These are model parents trying to do all they possibly can for the benefit of their child. Their view on what is best for Charlie differs from the court.”

The fact that the final decision comes at the hands of a court under the name of “Human Rights,” serves as a reminder that government involvement is never the answer, and in this case, it is in opposition to over 83,000 people who have pledged in support of a giving a baby boy the opportunity to have a second chance.