For nearly 60 years, Great Britain has been “idolized” by progressives for its “cultural” contributions, spanning the mid-1960’s British musical invasion to present-day “woke” attitudes that dominate Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Now the NHS — British “National Health Service” — has unwittingly bestowed the gift of a “canary in the coal mine” to conservatives, if only our ears are attuned to its song.
A disturbing article that first appeared in “Russia Today” (RT) on November 7 has been picked up by other news outlets. The essence of the piece is that the NHS is instituting policies to ensure that the “political and social” views of captive patients will now be ongoingly “evaluated and punished” as deemed necessary.
Patients who direct “racist or sexist” abuse at hospital staff could have their treatment withdrawn — as soon as is medically safe — under a new “disciplinary” system which would see “red cards” handed out to repeat offenders. The “Red Racism Card“ scheme was recently implemented by the NHS’s North Bristol Trust (NBT) in response to increasing incidents of “racist” behavior from patients toward medical professionals.
But the proposal has “triggered” mixed reactions. “A message that there’s zero tolerance towards racism will lead to a level of self-control,” Weyman Bennett, co-convenor of the “Stand up to Racism” campaign told RT, adding that, “most of these people will find that once their behavior is deemed unacceptable, they realize that they can no longer behave like that.”
Stephen Morris, the national secretary for the English Democrats Party, challenged Bennett’s view in the on-air debate, saying that the NHS “is there to treat people” and it should do so “without question.”
Under the scheme, a patient who is “sexist or racially” abusive toward staff would be warned and receive a “yellow card” initially — and if the behavior continues, they would be given a “red card” and have their treatment withdrawn as soon as it is medically safe, NBT chief Andrea Young told the BBC.
The goal is to “challenge and report” incidents of abuse, to send a “strong signal that any racism or discrimination is completely unacceptable” and will be met with consequences, she said.
Trying to monitor “sexism and racism” in this way can “open a massive can of worms,” Morris said, if a patient holds views meaning they don’t want to be treated by a certain type of person.
“Somebody who may have philosophical or religious beliefs about being treated by women or being treated by a certain person, then their philosophical and religious beliefs have to be also respected, and if the NHS are not going to respect their views on that, then they’re going to fall foul of the Equality Act,” he said.
Bennett disagreed, arguing that there is “no reason to respect” the fact that someone simply refuses to be treated by a black person or an Asian person, for instance.
“Being a racist isn’t a ‘philosophical view,’ it’s just plain wrong,” he said. “People that are racist need to be challenged and it has to be done in such a way that they can simply understand that their behavior is unacceptable,” he added.
The heightened tensions and stress of being in hospital, however, are not “normal circumstances,” Morris said – and even asking someone to just calm down could actually “escalate the situation.”
“What you need to do is make sure you get them treated, get them out, report the behavior and then get them prosecuted if need be afterwards,” he said. “If you start issuing yellow cards and red cards in the hospitals, that’s going to aggravate people more.”
In Bennett’s view it would be “easier for health professionals to give people a warning about their behavior without necessarily bringing in the police and the courts.”
Imagine an elderly WWII-era patient asking a Jamaican nurse “what that funny smell is” if he were to get a whiff of the jerk chicken curry she had for lunch. Is that “racist” and who decides? A betting person might wager that the patient would get a “yellow card” at the very least. If on the following day our theoretical patient were to remark about the attractiveness of her shoes or hairstyle, would a “red card” be in the offing, heralding premature discharge? Again, who decides?
Think it couldn’t or wouldn’t happen in a U.S., one-size-fits-all “health care gulag” administered by the Deep State? We’ve seen how an anonymous “whistleblower” peddling secondhand, unsubstantiated “grievances” has been able to create an imbroglio of unprecedented “impeachment” actions for our president and our Constitution.
Imagine if Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, or Steve Bannon were a patient in a New York City, Boston, or San Francisco hospital, where the majority of the staff reflected surrounding community attitudes and values. Can anyone guarantee that “snowflake health care professionals” inclined toward immediate and perpetual offense would not jump at the chance to misconstrue or even concoct “racist or sexist” umbrage?
Death panels have been warned against and with good reason, but what about “wrong thought panels,” where anonymous reports can dictate that a cancer patient awaiting a bone marrow transplant must be released once stabilized on chemotherapy, back to his home, in what would essentially be a death sentence — all because of real, imagined, or fabricated indignation or even just annoyance? A grudge against a sexually normative patient by a transgender minority orderly in a fatal form of discrimination can easily be foreseen.
Anyone who has ever dealt with the DMV, the IRS, or the Social Security Administration will be quick to comprehend the terrifying possibilities inside a new health care system where, for all intents and purposes, all recourse and alternatives will have been outlawed.
Cost isn’t everything. Elizabeth Warren’s outlandish $52-trillion price tag for her “Medicare for All” plan has appropriately been the subject of much media coverage.
“The doctor will see you now” might depend instead on factors controlled by those who have their own “tyrannical” agenda.
