seems like its an education or media-bias problem more than a healthcare problem.
If a majority of the poor in America are not educated enough to understand how public healthcare will benefit them and the country, or are educated enough to understand but not educated enough to realise media outlets have a politcal agenda and might not be reporting accurately, then public healthcare is still not going to happen.
(and they might not want socialism, but it seems like they dont understand that democracy has problems too. and healthcare is the living example. but again, it circles back around to being educated enough to understand that democracy is good, but it isnt perfect, and no system is)
See, even someone who should know better gets the argument confused. Socialism is not opposing democracy. Much of Europe is more socialist than the US and have democracies as strong or stronger than the US.
A "free society" doesn't require that parents be given free reign to torture their children. You may wish to argue whether that's what was happening, but that's the reasoning the state gave for their actions. If you'd like to argue that a free society does require this, go ahead, but I don't think most people agree.
Alfie's doctors made the decision that taking him from hospital for an experimental treatment in a different country had a strong chance of killing him, and that he was better off dying peacefully and not in pain in the UK. Alfie's parents fought to try and save his life at any cost even if it meant he went through tortuous pain first.
Frankly both sides of the argument are understandable. No one wants a child to suffer but no parent wants to give up on their baby. It's a tragic case.
It's also an exception. Using it as the basis of how you decide 99.999% of other medical cases is idiotic, and using Alfie's memory as a tool to promote a particular system of healthcare payment is obscene and shameful.
Just remember this - for every case like Alfie's where there genuinely are two sides to consider there are millions more where the doctors are simply right. Setting a precedent that parents wishes automatically overrule the doctors would cause so many children to suffer. This is why we let doctors and courts make decisions - to save children from stupid parents.
Clearly he can be sedated, and that isn't an argument for letting the state kill people without trial anyway.
Just to clarify, the state didn't kill him. He died of GABA-transaminase deficiency, which was only diagnosed after he died. The treatment that his parents wanted to try was a shot in the dark. No one knew what was wrong with Alfie.
You are arguing that taking a child from hospital, causing him more pain and suffering, putting him through a frightening and scary procedure, that has no basis in medicinal science (as there's no way to know if it'll cure an undiagnosed problem) is better than letting him die peacefully, safely and surrounded with love.
You can take a "life at any cost" point of view but the UK Court didn't. It took the view that a pain free and caring death was better than an agonising and highly unlikely long shot.
They removed his life support, against the wishes of his parents and then prevented them from accepting help. He survived ~5 days without it.
While it's a sad story I agree, it's not the point. Giving the state the power to decide who lives and dies without a trial and conviction for a crime is something many of us had hoped was settled long ago.
Ok, let's try a nice straightforward story. A child is bitten by a dog that definitely has rabies (this can be established by autopsy). The child's parents refuse any treatment (vaccination). It is about a 99% chance that the child will die of rabies without the vaccination. Do you believe the state (or any other actor) should have any power to intervene?
The Alfie Evans case could well have had the same outcome with fully private care, since it was a case about the rights of the child rather than about funding for treatment.
(Besides, we can probably find a lot more cases of dead children in the US where they were simply denied or unable to afford coverage ...)
In the US the doctors would have done exactly the same thing: they would have proposed a treatment plan; the parents would have disagreed; the doctors would have gone to court and probably would have won.
But in the US there would have been the additional funding step: the parents would have had to get insurance companies to pay for futile treatment, and no compnay would do so, or the parents would have had to crowd-fund this treatment.
Here, for anyone interested, are some of the legal documents (in date order) around the Alfie Evans case. They clearly show that parents have a right to a family life and to care for their child as they see fit, but that this right isn't total because the child is also human and has his own human rights. The paramountcy principle mean that the rights of the child come before the rights of the parents.
Please note that because of the involvement of the Christian Legal Centre in some of the court cases there's been a lot of misinformation spread about the case.
I know that there's nothing I can say to change your mind: you have an ideological viewpoint, and that's okay. But I think you should at least acknowledge that your opinion is not based on fact.
I accept you are correct about the paramountcy principle. I have read about the case in the last hour, and realize I was wrong to equate it with murder.
The details make me uncomfortable (with the court decision), he had an offer from a qualified intuition for help.
