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.

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