Is There a Dr. House in the house?

Americans are fascinated with the very successful TV show 'House' that is a show about a Dr. House at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital (PPH) in Princeton, NJ.  Although Dr. House is a drug addict and an incorrigible nut job, he's a lovable nutjob and is revered for his non-conventional brilliance.  The show is hilarious, exceptionally well scripted and the cast of supporting characters is equally loony and eminently entertaining.  That said, the dark side of House is that it's morally reprehensible because it is nothing more than a monstrous propaganda machine for Big Pharm and socialized medicine.  PPH is a free government funded hospital that leaves folks with the distinct impression that if America had socialized medical care, everybody with a real or perceived ailment could just stroll into any hospital or medical facility and immediately have a team of the top docs fawning all over them with deep concern.  House and his team also pump patients full of dangerous pharmaceuticals and frequently without even a verifiable diagnosis.  In that respect, the show is also a powerful lobby for Big Pharm as patients are routinely churned into guinea pigs.

While government and the media are indeed propaganda masters when it comes to blurring facts from fiction, fiction tends to prevail because it's a high dose of reliable utopian 'feel good' delusions.

What is the reality about socialized medical care? Dan Mitchell at International Liberty reported on some real facts about the British socialized healthcare system and quotes several reliable sources.

More Stomach-Turning Horror Stories from the UK Government-Run Healthcare System

Hundreds of hospital patients died needlessly. In the wards, people lay starving, thirsty and in soiled bedclothes, buzzers droning hopelessly as their cries for help went ignored. Some received the wrong medication; some, none at all.Over 139 days, the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital scandal has heard testimony from scores of witnesses about how an institution which was supposed to care for the most vulnerable instead became a place of danger. Decisions about which patients to treat were left to receptionists…and nurses switched off equipment because they did not know how to use it. …patients were left so dehydrated that some began drinking from flower vases. By the time the hospital’s failings were exposed by regulators, in 2009, up to 1,200 patients had died needlessly between 2005 and 2008. …on the wards, patients – most of them elderly – were left in agony and screaming for pain relief, as their loved ones desperately begged for help. The human toll was dreadful. In the course of 18 months, one family lost four members, including a newborn baby girl, after a catalogue of failings by the hospital. …Patients were left without medication, food and drink, and left on commodes. Basic hygiene was neglected: a woman was left unwashed for the last four weeks of her life. Relatives tried to keep their loved ones clean, scrubbing down beds and furniture and even bringing in clean linen. One consultant described how amid the chaos, it seemed at though nurses became “immune to the sound of pain”.

Of course, the above horrifyingly inhumane account that was documented by the UK based Telegraph is a far cry from the warm and fuzzy House depiction of socialized government run medical care.  Trusting the government with your life and the lives of your loved ones is simply foolish but once the government legislates a legalized monopoly on healthcare, the quality goes down, rationing kicks in and arrogant public sector employees are immune to human suffering.