Maybe it’s heavy-handed to use “virtue” in contradistinction to Josie Cunningham, the unwed mother who ditched her kids and her dog after getting a taxpayer-funded boob job (36DD, for those wondering).
Josie will leave Harley, five, and two-year-old Frankie — her children from a previous relationship — with her parents while she chases her Jordan modelling dream. [….]
Yet she said: “I don’t earn much, but I think I will get used to living the high life very easily.
“I already have showbiz connections as my friend’s boyfriend was a contestant on the Apprentice and I’ve been to clubs like Trader Vic’s and to the Dorchester Hotel.
“I’ve even started to collect Louis Vuitton handbags and have ordered a chihuahua puppy. The sky’s the limit now I’ve got my new boobs — and I can’t thank the NHS enough for giving them to me.”
Josie was rather flat-chested and wants to be a model. She cried at the doctor’s office and got someone to sign off on her taxpayer-funded breast augmentation. Now, she’s ditched her family and is convinced that fame and fortune are hers (provided she purchases enough designer handbags, of course).
It’s not like the NHS is rolling in money; this is the “free” medical system that will only pay for surgery in one ear for those with hearing problems, will require patients to be blind in one eye before paying for macular degeneration surgery, and has a “death pathway” for the elderly.
The private sector is excellent at determining if a woman’s modelling career is worth a pair of fake breasts: any agency that sees that surgery is the only thing stopping a young woman will happily pay for that surgery. (It’s sort of like how some companies will pay for a master’s degree.) Six or seven thousand dollars is a small price to invest in the next Kate Upton, but taxpayers will go broke paying six or seven thousand dollars to outfit every delusional twenty-something with enormous fake breasts.
Private insurance companies seldom waste their time on this nonsense; they care more about ensuring that they have enough money to pay for chemotherapy. (Government-run medicine: the hellacious insurance company that your liberal friends warned you about.) If you want health insurance that will pay for emotionally-distressed wanna-be models to have huge bags of saline put into their chests, you can buy that insurance, but you do not have to.
If there are scores of young women out there, forever scarred by their 32A chests, then a private charity can be set up to give them surgery. (In fact, there are such things on the Web already, with crowd-sourced funding.)
There are many options outside of the NHS for young Josie to seek her fame. Taxpayers, however, do not have any other options than to fork over money for ridiculous schemes that have nothing to do with ensuring that people aren’t dying in the streets. For the record, I have nothing against reconstructive surgery, nor any particular grievance against laws that require insurance companies to pay for it. Given my own medical history, I am irate at people who cannot distinguish between putting someone back together after a surgery or an accident, and plain cosmetic/vanity surgery.
The Fog of Law 