October 2011 issue of Freedom's Phoenix magazine - fr33aid

"HEALTHCARE": THE FINAL SOLUTION
By L. Neil Smith
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READERS have
occasionally complained
that mv
columns are too
conversational, too
personal, or too intimate.
That's okay
with me. I'm a novelist
by persuasion, and, as such, my interest,
above all, is in individual character -- more so,
it seems, with every year that passes.
In this instance -- the politics of what's generally
referred to "healthcare" (for several reasons,
I don't care for that expression, myself)
-- that may be a good thing. In many ways, there
is nothing more personal, more intimate, and,
one hopes, more conversational than one's relationship
with one's "primary healthcare provider",
another politically charged catchphrase
that tends to trigger my reflex to vomit.
Historically, people have told their doctors
things they wouldn't tell anybody else, including
their co-workers, their bartenders, and especially
their spouses, intensely private, potentially
embarrassing things that may have a
bearing on their continued health, wellbeing,
and existence. Exactly how likely are they to
tell the same things to some faceless factotum
whom they've never seen before this particular
office visit, and whom they will likely never see
again, especially if they know that their every
word and gesture, their every twitch and tremor
-- their every habit and habituation -- may be
taken down and used against them in a kangaroo
court of what passes for law these days?
Never forget that we now suffer under a regime
where it's a crime to remove prescription
medicine from the container it was issued in and
put it in another, more convenient container, a
regime in which -- if the medical martinets become
aware of it -- your ownership of firearms
will be noted in your "permanent record" as a
mental health problem (exactly as they are by
some of your kids' school shrinks), and a regime
in which your political resistance to medical
Marxism (by reading this article, for example)
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is considered a symptom -- by the Department
of Homeland Security -- that you're potentially
a domestic terrorist.
Even under the best of circumstances, more
individuals die of iatrogenic -- doctor-caused --
injuries and diseases every year than from anything
that comes from the barrel of a gun except
politics. But there are many more rational, intelligent
reasons to resist medical Marxism. The
kind of rationing Sarah Palin was ridiculed for
predicting is already at work. Death panels have
decreed that, after a stay in the hospital, if your
problem flares up again, you will be denied reentry.
They figure to save about nine hundred
million dollars every year.
Or is it nine hundred billion?
And they don't have to pay for the funerals.
Jackboot Janet II and all her orcs and goblins
notwithstanding, I could write a hundred
thousand words right here on the inefficacy and
incompetence of healing as dispensed by minions
of an entity capable only of breaking things
and killing people. I grew up in the military; I
know what socialized medicine is about, having
suffered more than once at its clumsy hands
and seen others suffer, too. The stories that issue
from the bowels of Veterans' Administration
Hospitals (today's equivalent of the Bastille or
Chateau d'If) would horrify even Stephen King.
We already know that socialist claims that
their brand of snake oil will bring medical costs
down is a blatant, bald-faced lie. They're the one
who taught us all to think in fourteen figures.
Under their "system", those who can't or won't
work for a living will continue getting attention
for free, simply by demanding it, exactly as they
have for two or three generations. The extremely
wealthy will jet off to Switzerland or somewhere
to get their own owies stitched up. The
Productive Class will be handed the bill, not
only their own (which is bad enough at government
prices) but those of the Freeloader Class,
as well.
Continues on Page 16
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