CHAVEZ TO DEEPEN SOCIALIST NIGHTMARE IN VENEZUELA

YAHOO/AP:

President Hugo Chavez said Tuesday his government will nationalize Venezuela's privately owned hospitals and clinics if they fail to reduce health care costs.

"If the owners of the private clinics don't want to obey the laws, then the private clinics will be nationalized," Chavez said in a nationally televised speech. "They will become part of the public health service."

Venezuela has a two-tiered health system in which wealthier, insured patients often can afford prompter, better treatment at private hospitals.

"This is the evil of capitalism," Chavez said of the health care costs at private clinics. "We have to regulate this progressively, transforming the savage capitalist market into a market of solidarity."

... Chavez has nationalized the South American nation's largest telecommunications firm, electricity companies and the oil industry.

HERE'S A RECENT EXAMPLE OF THE SOCIALIST MEDICAL NIGHTMARE IN THE UK:

A PENSIONER who borrowed more than £7,000 to pay for a hip operation abroad after being told she was too overweight to be treated on the NHS is trying to claim the money back from health chiefs.

Former Bartlet Hospital canteen worker Moira Ryan, 69, from Felixstowe, flew to Malta with her son for the successful hip replacement.

The total bill for their trip, including hospital costs, flights and accommodation, was £7,200 - and now she wants Suffolk Primary Care Trust to foot the bill.

The PCT had refused her treatment because of its policy of not providing surgery to most people with a body mass index of more than 35 unless they go through a weight-loss plan.

NEED I REMIND YOU THE THE LEFTIES IN THE UK WANT TO STOP PROVIDING CARE TO SMOKERS, TOO?

(BUT OF COURSE THERE'S MONEY FOR GENDER RE-ASSIGNMENT. AMPUTATING A PENIS - OR SCULPTING ONE WHERE A CLITORIS ONCE WAS - IS EVIDENTLY MORE PC THAN SMOKING.)

MORE ON THE EVILS OF SOCIALIZED MEDICINE HERE.

THE PUSH FORE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE CONTINUES DESPITE THE FACT THAT THE CANADIANS HATE THEIR SYSTEM AND THE BRITS HATE THEIRS, AND THAT NEITHER THE FRENCH OR THE GERMANS CAN AFFORD THEIRS.

IT'S INSANE.