It’s seldom that I find salvation for my ever dwindling faith in humanity withing the socialist confines of the Red Star but I’ve found at least one individual of intelligence who wrote in:
An Aug. 10 letter refers to the cost to society for the choices made by a helmetless biker or beltless driver if injured. The point was made that the choices of an individual have potential dollar costs for all of us.
The writer then adds that universal health care would make this aspect a moot point. Unfortunately, the cost of care would still need to be paid. With universal health care, it would be paid by the taxpayers. Universal health care isn’t free; the premiums are just in a different form.
DR. RICHARD COCHRANE, VADNAIS HEIGHTS
Notice that the man is a doctor (doing a Google search for his name and Minnesota reveals he’s possibly an anesthesiologist). Why is that important? Honestly it’s not as he topic being discussed is economics, not medical practice, but people seem to think every doctor believes government “privided” healthcare is without reproach. I’ve not actually found a single doctor who supports the idea of government “provided” healthcare because they realize such a system will turn them into government slaves insomuch that they will no longer be allowed to select whether or not they’ll take somebody as a patient, the operations they will be allowed to perform, or what equipment their practice will have available.
A dirty little secret (which isn’t a secret to anybody with a brain) about government “provided” healthcare is that it basically takes doctors and changes them from free individuals into slaves of the state. The government gets to decide what operations will be covered (and rationed), who will go to what doctors, who each doctor will operate on, what medicines will be available (which the government already controls), what equipment each hospital will have available, etc. Nobody wants to be put into a position where they every move is controlled by another but that’s exactly the position government “provided” healthcare will put doctors in.
It’s also nice to see a doctor point out the fact that “free” healthcare isn’t free, the cost is just spread over the entire populace at the point of a gun.