Ayn Rand: “The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine”
We may not have the sort of “public option” Rand had in mind when she wrote this in Atlas Shrugged, but it’s still a potent reminder of why we fight against statism:
“I quit when medicine was placed under state control, some years ago,” said Dr. Hendricks. “Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything — except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the ‘welfare’ of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only ‘to serve.’ That a man who’s willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards — never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind — yet what is it that they expect to depend upon, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it — and still elss safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.
Sizzling prose. Few ever talk about how the doctor works so hard to achieve what he does — his labor is talked about like it’s silly putty for the state to play with. Shouldn’t the doctor be able to choose the terms he sees his patients on, how much he charges, and what their relationship is? No, says the state. No, says the Democratic Party — and much of the Republican Party, sadly. Voluntary relationships based on mutual agreement are a thing of the past. And it would be awfully selfish to not submit your will to what politicians want — or, worse still, what the “people” want. Right?
