X-Message-Number: 23271 From: Subject: Universal health care anyone? (Jerry T. Searcy) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 22:24:52 +0000 Musings on freedom by FMN CEO, Louis James I have written numerous times on what a disastrously bad idea socialism is. Last summer's heat wave showed what a lethally flawed idea it is, after France's socialist medical system proved so inept and almost 15,000 people died. That's such a huge number, it's hard to comprehend ... but there is one death I can more fully feel the agony of, one death that really drives home to me what a bad idea socialism in medicine (or anything else) is. In my report on the 22st ISIL World Conference, held last summer in Lithuania, I wrote about Virgis Daukas, that lovable libertarian mad man who jousted so jovially with other cars and trucks on the highways, while I clutched my armrests in terror. Well, Virgis' family is one among many in Eastern Europe who enjoyed the pass time of picking fresh mushrooms. Or, they did until last year when a poisonous variety of mushroom that looks just like the edible one started appearing in unprecedented numbers -- growing among the edible ones. Sadly, Virgis, his wife Ilona, and his son Bartas (think, "Bart Simpson with a Russian accent"), seasoned mushroom pickers though they were, were fooled by the poisonous kind. All three ended up in the hospital. Ilona, who had a hobbit-like love of mushrooms, ate the most and died. Virgis was very ill for days, the doctors giving him about a 50/50 chance of surviving, but finally pulled through. Bartas was checked into a children's hospital, and he bounced back pretty quickly, but was then devastated, as were an older brother and sister, to find out that his mother had died. Virgis took it hard too, initially blaming himself for not spotting the poisonous mushrooms. (He didn't know then that it had become something of an epidemic.) However, it turns out that there was genuine blame, and it was not his. When the elder Daukases were admitted to their state-run hospital, Virgis told the doctors to pump Ilona's stomach, because throughout her life she had been unable to regurgitate on her own. The hospital did not do this for either of them. The doctors said it was hopeless to pump a stomach six hours after ingestion. However, Virgis was still coughing mushrooms up, as long as 16 hours after he'd eaten them. Bartas had his stomach pumped at the pediatric hospital, where they considered the procedure routine, and recovered relatively easily. Worse yet, they later found out that there is a medicine that can neutralize the poison of this particular mushroom, but it was not administered to any of them. When Virgis learned of this, after Ilona's death, he was told that it isn't licensed for use in the hospital he and Ilona were in. It's available in Lithuania, but the doctors did not request it. When asked why, they said that it was because it is expensive. If someone needed it and could not afford it, it could create problems. So, it was a policy decision, made by the medical bureaucrats running the "free" state hospital, not to have the medicine available and not to even inform patients of the possible treatment. In the aftermath, Virgis wanted to hold the negligent doctors responsible for their actions. But he was told that he could not be allowed to have access to his wife's hospital records. When he sought records from the emergency call to the hospital, he found that the records had been altered. When he asked for an official independent investigation, he found that those charged with this responsibility were not independent but were part of the same hospital administration. There's the compassion of socialism for you -- after all, it's the needs of the whole "social organism" that matter, not the petty needs of individuals. When Virgis went to the Lithuanian press with his story, they were not interested. (Shut up, little individual cell, the social organism doesn't want to hear griping.) People actually told Virgis that he should just be happy that the hospital was there for him and Bartas at all! Here are some pictures of these little cells, so unimportant, so expendable from the social organism's point of view: http://www.free-market.net/special/TheDaukasFamily.html And now I read that the self-anointed gurus of public policy relating to medicine, the Institute of Medicine, are urging the U.S. to adopt so-called universal coverage by 2010. (See: http://www.free-market.net/rd/429467368.html ) Well, _this_ human being proclaims that he is not just a cell of some gargantuan and uncaring social organism. I'm not just a temporarily useful skin cell, to be flaked away like so much dandruff, after my usefulness is done. There is no such thing as a social organism in this world -- it's just a metaphor, an often destructive and sometimes deadly metaphor. What's real is people. And they are not expendable means to greater ends, but each a unique, irreplaceable end, in and of him- or herself, free to make the most they can of their lives. To fight for that freedom I have pledged myself, and to that fight I intend to give everything I've got in 2004 ... as I have before, thanks to the support of readers like you. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23271