Another triumph of socialized medicine!

Reports are out that in North Korea, amputations are being performed without anesthesia, sometimes by candlelight.  More or less, due to the great success of centralized control of the economy, doctors cannot even offer the suffering a few shots of whiskey before sawing away.  In other words, North Korean medicine has become in some ways more primitive than a Revolutionary War field hospital.

It's a lot like Cuba, where in the tropics, patients at mental hospitals froze to death this winter.