When bureaucrats run health care

Get used to this here in the US if Hilary becomes president and finally pushes her socialized health care system through. The problem with government-run health care is that medical and scientific reality is not always the top priority for the bean counters and social-engineering bureaucrats.

To wit, the British National Health Trust has dinged a family doctor because he refuses to perform a cervical exam ... on a man. If you’re a guy who isn’t familiar with female anatomy, let’s just say that you can’t examine what isn’t there.

Unfortunately, this confused fellow believes himself to be a hermaphrodite—someone born with the reproductive plumbing of both a man and a woman—even though doctors find no evidence of any female sexual organs. Yet rather than refer this guy to a mental health professional, the politically correct NHS social engineers—eager to push the gender definition boundaries—find fault with the doctor.

One doctor in the practice said: “We are worried that the PCT [Primary Care Trust] is so falling over backwards to be patient-friendly, that it has gone too far the other way. Silly things are starting to happen.”

Silly is right. One of the doctors is reduced to requesting “to hear from anyone, medical or otherwise, who could teach him the correct way to carry out a cervical smear on a 34-year-old male.” He adds:

“My suggestion would be to accede unquestioningly to the patient’s demand and carry out the procedure requested. Provided of course that a representative of the primary care trust could indicate the necessary part of this gentleman’s anatomy, and was able to give the learned medics a clue as to how they could access it.”

That would be a very interesting doctor’s appointment. Coming soon to a HilaryCare facility near you in 2008.

Technorati Tags:Britain, gender, health care, socialized medicine