This is the timeline of German universal healthcare.
• January 30, 1933 – Hitler sworn in as Chancellor of Germany
• March 24, 1933 – Reichstag passes the “Enabling Act” making Hitler Dictator of Germany
• July 3, 1934 – Nazi universal healthcare law enacted, “Gesetz über die Vereinheitlichung des Gesundheitswesens”
• October, 1939 – Hitler authorizes mass murders of tens of thousands children with disabilities by doctors of the German universal healthcare system. The T-4 program followed which allowed the extermination of hundreds of thousands of disabled adults.
The law is not readily available on the Internet, but there are a few references to it and scholarly articles in the German language have been posted on the Internet. A couple such articles are listed in the links at the bottom of this post.
Many know of Hitler’s euthanasia program, but it is not widely understood that the Nazi universal healthcare system enabled such mass-murders. It is also not well known that the much-praised German healthcare system — often held up as an example that other nations should follow — was enacted into law by the Nazis and actually enabled the mass murders of millions in the Holocaust. Hitlercare was not revoked in Germany until 2007, ironically one year before Obama would be elected president and then would start a campaign to pass our own universal healthcare law.
There appears to have been nothing very sinister, in itself, about the Hitlercare law in the beginning. However, it gave the Nazi regime national control of healthcare and enabled Hitler to carry out the mass extermination of ultimately millions of unwanted persons. Certainly, Hitler did not enact his healthcare law just to provide better healthcare to the German people, but because he wanted to use it to manipulate society by eliminating certain classes of people.
Hitler issued a personal decree (aka executive order) that allowed doctors to murder handicapped children. The T-4 Program followed, which enabled doctors to mass-murder adults with disabilities, in order to save the Government the money of taking care of them.
The Holocaust began in the hospitals controlled by the German universal healthcare. The early techniques for mass extermination were developed and tested in the institutions regulated by the German universal healthcare law.
The Jewish problem was framed as a collective hygienic problem for the German Nation. Jews were portrayed as an infection of the German collective body that must be exterminated. Doctors were used in the extermination camps to give the operation an aura of medical legitimacy. So, the entire mass extermination of Jews and other “undesirables” was seen as a extension of the — in the beginning — seemingly innocuous and harmless Nazi universal healthcare system.
It is not that universal healthcare, in itself, is evil, but it enables and can be used as a tool by evil men, who may gain power. Many have a naive and misguided confidence that the US can never be ruled by a tyrant, who ignores the Constitution and brazenly makes his own laws. Other, more worldly persons, would point out that we already have such a president.
LINKS:
Der Weg zum “Gesetz über die Vereinheitlichung des Gesundheitsvvesens” vom 3. Juli 1934
How Hitler Used Universal Healthcare In The Holocaust (Video)
Hitler authorizes killing of disabled
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide by Robert Jay Lifton