Wednesday Potpourri

First, when Luigi Mangione executed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, he provoked yet another discussion about nationalized health care. 

Why should it not to be possible to provide high quality, affordable health care for everyone? In truth, it does not work that way, but the proponents of socialized medicine do not care.

Anyway, in the news from the great state of Canada, we discover that socialized medicine involves rationing. It also produces doctor and nurse shortages, not to mention equipment shortages, but don’t let that bother you. It’s free-- sort of.

In the news from Canada is this, via AnechoicMedia:

This Canadian man died after a hospital failed to diagnose his torn artery and left him waiting for six hours as a low-priority patient before he gave up, went home, and expired. 

The test that could have saved his life requires a CT scan. Canada has fewer than one third as many CT scanners per capita as the United States. It takes Canadian hospitals a median of seven hours to perform an inpatient CT scan after one has been ordered, over three times as long as in a study on a US hospital. 

We heard a lot recently that denying payment on a health insurance claim is morally equivalent to murder. But rationing is its own form of ongoing denial, a scarcity mindset that affects all patient care as providers have to contemplate who is most deserving of their limited public resource.

In an American emergency room, you are more likely to get unnecessary tests, be billed for time with ludicrously expensive equipment, and then fight with your insurance company over the bill. But the question is usually one of payment, rather than if the service can be supplied at all. 

Under a public system, the decision to ration care was made in advance as a matter of economic planning, but nobody in charge ever becomes tainted with moral responsibility for having "denied" an individual.

Now you know. Health care cannot be high quality, affordable and universal. As Ben Shapiro once said-- choose two, because you cannot have all three.

Second, just in case you think that the first case was an anomaly, here is another case, via Robyn Urback, from Canada:

Woman waits 6 years for knee replacement. Gets surgery but has complication. Has to wait 8 days for follow-up procedure because there are no beds. Because of delay, she now needs amputation.

Third, you have doubtless heard that United Nations officials are in bed with Hamas. Nothing surprising there. So the UN is hard at work covering up the derelictions of its employees.

Liza Rosen reports:

The UN is in panic mode after Israel released videos from Gaza’s security cameras showing Hamas employees of UNRWA torturing Gazan civilians to death. Among the prisoners who were killed there are many innocent gay people, journalists, protesters, Christians and anyone suspected of spying or leaving Islam (ex-Muslims). This is what the UN, the international community and the Western media support when they side with Hamas, Gaza’s Health Ministry and UNRWA.

All of the deluded college students marching for a free Palestine do not understand that under Hamas, homosexuality is a capital offense. And that honor killings are perfectly acceptable.

And let’s not forget, for those who whine about a two state solution, that in Islam the penalty for not being Muslim or for becoming an apostate, is death.

Fourth, in once-Great Britain, the current Labour government is cracking down on speech. So much for liberal democracy.

Radio Genoa has the story:

British man writes on social media that he doesn't want to see Palestine flags in his neighborhood and British police raid his house at 4 am to arrest him.

Fifth, on the learning loss front, we are seeing new data that shows how badly American schoolchildren were damaged by the covid lockdowns.

Rick Moran reports on PJ Media:

New test scores from the 2023 school year show a near-catastrophic fall in U.S. school test scores compared to the 2019 pre-pandemic scores.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) standardized math test shows the average mathematics score for fourth graders has dropped by 18 points while scores for eighth graders declined by 27 points.

Children in other parts of the world also saw their scores decline, though not as much as American children.

As it happens, children whose parents can afford tutoring and other advanced educational tools do better.

Moran remarks that it did not all begin with covid. The problem had been ongoing for several years before covid.

The fault, middle school teachers who did not understand basic mathematical concepts.

But they do have a union covering up their basic incompetence.

Sixth, in Madison, Wisconsin a 15 year old girl was upset about something or other and opened fire during study hall. Natalie Rupnow-- you can call her Samantha-- was kind enough to leave a manifesto behind. 

Funnily enough, it reads like a radical feminist exercise in hating males.

For instance:

Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly. Only then can women be free to create a new world. ill be a pioneer, ill be the first to take the first step. i dont care if theyr fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially n*ggers or politicians. ive been craving to kill them all. This is my mission. only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from this earth is when Then the world will be clean and women can start over. It's the only way. in aproximately 10 mintue si should be dead, its strange but it feels good.

True enough, most feminists do not hate men. Yet, the manifesto  echoes a certain strain of feminist thought.

In fairness, I will note, according to a Newsmax report, that the manifesto has not yet been authenticated. 

And now we also know, young Samantha was in therapy.

Seventh, in the mental health world, some advice to help you to overcome depression. The answer: take extra steps, as in walking.

Newsmax reports:

Can you literally step away from depression?

A new global review of data found that "increasing the number of daily steps, even at modest levels, was associated with a reduction in depressive symptoms."

The Spanish study found that up to a level of about 10,000 steps per day, the odds for depression decline as daily step levels rise.

Compared to a baseline of 5,000 steps taken per day, folks who took even 1,000 more steps daily saw a 9% drop in their odds for developing depression, the researchers found.

Those benefits quickly mounted up: Compared to folks walking 5,000 steps per day or less, those who walked 7,000 steps/day had a 31% lower odds for depression, the study found.

Eighth, speaking of batshit, literally, two men in upstate New York decided to use it to grow some marijuana. They smoked the weed and contracted pneumonia.

The Daily Mail has the story:

Two men in upstate New York died from pneumonia after using bat feces as fertilizer to grow cannabis.

The 64 year old and 59 year old had smoked marijuana tainted with a fungus found in the guano, causing deadly lung infections in both men. 

Both deaths occurred in Rochester and they were not connected to one another, highlighting the growing trend of using bat poop to grow cannabis.

It gives a new meaning to the notion of-- batshit crazy.

Please subscribe to my Substack, for free or preferably for a fee.