Government run healthcare - the promise of equality for all! Everyone is equal, universality for all!

In reality, of course, it doesn't work like that. Like in George Orwell's masterpiece Animal Farm, everyone may well be equal, it's just that some are more equal than others.

One of the best instances of this comes from the sacred heart of modern government-run healthcare - the UK.

The Times of London reported yesterday that "The National Health Service has spent £1.5m paying for hundreds of its staff to have private health treatment so they can leapfrog their own waiting lists. More than 3,000 staff, including doctors and nurses, have gone private at the taxpayers’ expense in the past three years because the queues at the clinics and hospitals where they work are too long."

Just think about that for a minute: the only way for people who work in government-run healthcare to actually get adequate healthcare, is to seek out private treatment. You know, the very thing the Obama Administration doesn't want the American people to have.

The Times continues: "The health department defended the practice and said sending doctors, nurses and other key staff for private treatment helped to get them back to work. If trusts want to get their staff back to work more quickly they can’t jump NHS waiting lists, so going private is an option,” said the spokesman."

Of course, this option isn't availiable to most people. While taxpayers wait for years for critical surgery, health bureaucrats still get first class treatment. And the only way for a doctor to get treated themselves is to go outside their own system.

With socialised medicine, all patients are equal. It's just that some are more equal than others.