The Wonders of Universal Medicine

...are not in the least limited to an increase in health risks:

An al-Qaeda leader in Iraq boasted before last week’s failed bombings in London and Glasgow that his group was planning to attack British targets and that “those who cure you will kill you”, The Times has learnt.

The warning was delivered to Canon Andrew White, a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, and could be highly significant as the eight Muslims arrested in the wake of the failed plot are all members of the medical profession.

It's too bad this occurred too late for Michael Moore's new movie. The intellectually honest individual that he is, he no doubt would have used this to demonstrate that, if universal healthcare is an overall good, it nonetheless poses some serious problems. Instead, he went to a third-world country, Cuba, to show how good the Commies are when it comes to treating illness. Tangentially, they also tend to be really good at massacring people.

And its also worth noting that hundreds of thousands of American refugees aren't braving the mighty ocean to make it to Castro's little paradise. Bush may very well be the most corrupt president we've had, but he's still much better than Castro. Or, to more properly, despite Bush's many, many, flaws, the American system is so superior to that of Cuba as to render any comparison trite.

Nor is this simply a spiteful attack on the ridiculous Moore. That he is an idiot is almost offset by his ability to make a riveting, if never accurate, documentary. Those whose ideology is primarily determined by emotional responses should have no trouble coming to the side of universal healthcare. But those of us who know a little bit more than Moore instinctively distrust any large government program, which invariably raises costs and exacerbates problems.

It's bound to happen any time you have an overarching bureaucratic arm trying to manage too much. Little things slip through the giant cracks in the system. You know, little things like letting terrorists into the medical profession.