In Memoriam: "Uncle Joe,"
Killed by "Health Care."

by Robert Jay March
Friday, March 19, 2010

As I write this, a couple of hours have passed since I received word that my Uncle Joe has died. I suppose you're wondering why I'm telling you about this; I'm doing so because his death was needless, caused by the rationing of health care in England by the National Health Service.

England has essentially the same system that the United States will have if Obama's health care power grab succeeds, so forgive me if I take the liberty of telling you about Uncle Joe, as a cautionary tale of what our future holds if the Health Care Bill is enacted.

About six years ago, my Uncle Joe was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The same kind of cancer that Rudy Giuliani and Don Imus have. Nowadays, prostate cancer is very treatable, and the survival rates are very high. However, under a nationalized health care system, care is rationed, and the elderly are frequently denied care based on the assumption that preserving their lives is simply not worth the expense.

That is precisely what happened to my Uncle Joe. The NHS, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it was not worth treating a man in his 70s. A paper-pushing bureaucrat effectively sentenced him to death.

Over the years, the cancer metastasised to his bones, and then his brain. He died, not of old age, but of the progressive effects of the prostate cancer. Rudy Giuliani was diagnosed several years before my uncle, and still leads a healthy productive life because he received treatment in the United States, under the very system that Obama and his cronies are working, conspiring, and back-room dealing to scuttle. Had Joe lived in the United States instead of Bolton, England, he would still be alive today.

Joe was a kind, gentle man, whom I first met in 1966, when I was 14 years old. He had saved up enough money so that he could bring his wife (my late mother's sister) and children to visit us in the States. Over the three weeks that they stayed with us, I got to know the British family I only was aware of abstractly up until that point.

During World War II, he had been taken prisoner by the Germans and held in a POW camp for 9 months. Joe, who was 6 feet tall, weighed 84 pounds when he was released. Joe had spent his entire working life as a cog in the system, working for Britain's National Rail network, which was operated by the British Government before it was privatized in 1993, but when Joe became ill, the NHS, also operated by the British Government, which was founded to see to it that everyone got health care, decided that Joe wasn't worth it. Those of us who knew and loved him know better.

Joe died about 5 weeks after his 60th wedding anniversary. Shortly before he died, he had to be placed in a nursing home. The day he died, my Aunt Janina, his wife, walked into his room and said "Joseph, I love you. How are you, my sunshine?" He looked at her, smiled, one tear in his eye, kissed her and died then and there. He weighed 84 pounds; the same as he weighed in the POW Camp.

The system that let my Uncle Joe die is the same system that Obama and his cronies are trying to force on us.

This is only one of the very many horror stories that have happened to my family over the years, as a direct result of Government interference in our lives. Most of those events happened here in the U.S., not in England or Europe. My immediate family was destroyed, and my mother died much earlier than she would have, as a direct result of Government meddling in our lives; always, done by well-meaning bureaucrats and their minions, who had our best interests at heart.

Those of you who are regular readers of MarchReport.com, and/or listeners of my podcasts, know that I have been a vocal opponent of Obama from the beginning. Since it's inception, I have financed MarchReport.com out of my own pocket: my earnings from another business I own, which did pre-press production for scholarly, scientific journals published by major universities. While I disagreed with the content of many of these journals -- particularly those focused on sociology and economics -- I have always regarded the First Amendment to be an absolute guarantee, and I never denied my services to anyone simply because I disagreed with the content of their material. As we have seen played out in the mass media on many issues recently, the Left disagrees: in their eyes, you are free to speak only if you agree with them; otherwise, you must be silenced, by whatever means necessary.

All of these universities and other publishers of scholarly journals rely on left-leaning organizations for their financing. After over a decade of doing business with us, suddenly, and for no apparent reason, ALL of these un-related publishers -- every one of them -- pulled their work from us within a few months of each other-after we began covering what I call the "Certifi-Gate" scandal -- the fact (for which I provide extensive proof) that Barack Obama does not meet the legal requirement to serve as President as defined by the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1.

Before you dismiss me as "one of those idiot birthers," be advised that I, too, initially did not believe the rumors. As my readers continued to e-mail me about their concerns, I resolved to check out the story in order to put their minds at ease. I was shocked to discover that the story was true, and over the last two years MarchReport.com has become one of the largest repositories of stories about this shocking scandal.

My other business was thus put out of business as a direct result of daring to tell the truth and prove it, and say so publicly on MarchReport.com.

I have been disabled and homebound for eight years, and will remain so for about another two years, by which time my injuries will be sufficiently healed as to allow me to take my place in the world again. Despite the constant excruciating pain caused by my disability, and being unable to leave my home, I work over 100 hours per week. I have never taken a penny of government money, or charity from anyone, and never will. MarchReport.com is read in 128 countries around the world, has a Google page rank of 4, our daily e-mail newsletter (separate and distinct from our much smaller Yahoo group) has approximately 240,000 subscribers, and as many as 18,000 unique visitors come to our website per month (many of them daily), for a total of over 60,000 page views per month. The advertising revenue generated by our small but enthusiastic audience is only enough to cover one month's expenses per year. Every investor I have talked to has balked at investing in a project run by a disabled man. When I tell them that I will be okay in a couple of years, they say "come back in a couple of years." Obama's people have seen to it that I do not have a couple of years.

I will soon be out of money, and will become destitute, as a direct result of defending my country from a would-be despot. Having read that, I must seem like the poster boy for nationalized health care: I'm disabled and without income, so those who would support such a system would think that I would welcome being rescued from my problems. I don't, and I won't allow it.

Over the last 6 decades, I have seen and personally experienced how much damage can be done by the well intentioned, who have only your best interests at heart and assume that they know better. They don't.

Those who support the health care bill are such well-intentioned fools, or weaklings who would prefer that others take care of them rather than assuming responsibility for themselves.

Over 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville warned us: "The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." He also said, "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."

Sound familiar? Doesn't that eerily predict just what is happening today?

I may crash and burn, but I will never yield. I may end up in a dumpster, but I will never yield to government imposed "care." Quoting de Tocqueville again, "A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains." That man is Barack Obama.

The so-called health care bill must be defeated. Please copy and send this to everyone you know who can make a difference. Call your representatives until the phone lines in Washington, DC melt.

The health care bill serves one purpose only: to see to the health of The State, not the people. IT MUST NOT BECOME LAW.

In the book It's Your Choice (1983), author Warren T. Hackett attributed the following quote to British historian Arnold Toynbee:

"The release of initiative and enterprise made possible by self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again, after freedom brings opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent; the incompetent and unfortunate grow envious and covetous; and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the golden calf of economic security. The historical cycle seems to be: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."

The Christian hymn "Amazing Grace," written by English poet and clergyman John Newton, who had been press-ganged into the Royal Navy and forced to participate in the slave trade, contains this line: "I once was lost but now am found." Whoops, lost again! Chains, anyone? Chains you can believe in?