With
Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid, plus countless state mandates and other
regulations of the private medical care and health-insurance market, we are rapidly
moving toward a total government takeover of medicine in America. Advocates of a
totally state-run and state-funded system—“single payer”—claim that medical treatment
should not be dictated by a person’s ability to pay and everyone should receive
the same level of care as a birthright.
Really?
One could make the same assertion for any human need, such as food: The rich
shouldn’t get any better food than the poor. Every person is entitled to get
the food he needs as a birthright. Therefore, the state will provide universal Foodcare. What would happen if such a
claim were made? It would be touted as a moral ideal, motivated by kindness
toward the needy. Opponents would quickly be vilified as callous, merciless
sadists who enjoy watching people starve to death—oh, and they’d also be
branded as racists and misogynists, as well. Before the American people knew
what hit them, a bill would be introduced, and it would become a law. Welcome
to Foodcare, the new government program that provides you with food, and you
need never do anything except open your mouth.
Initially,
the state gives you a deluxe food plan, which it touts as superior to the allegedly
immoral, low-quality food that the unfettered free-market “fat-cat” vendors tried
to pass off on you. The lobster you bought only on your birthday becomes your
regular fare, as does your favorite imported cheeses, exotic vegetables, and
beef made from cattle massaged with rice wine. You need no longer watch your
pennies now that your appetite and wallet have parted company.
Because
the same idea occurs to 300 million others, Foodcare’s costs skyrocket to ten
times its budget, and a Foodcare crisis develops. Big Brother can no longer
passively foot the bill for your busy mouth. Now he will dictate when, where,
and what you are allowed to eat. This requires numerous new government
agencies, thousands of bureaucrats, and a 110,000-page rulebook.
One
provision of Foodcare covers restaurants. You visit your favorite one to find
it is not what it used to be. Gone are the tablecloths, flower displays, and
cheerful hostess to greet you. In the past you gladly paid for these
enhancements in the price of your meal; but now the U.S. Department of
Restaurants has eliminated them as a wasteful indulgence of the people’s
resources. You seat yourself and peruse the menu, which has been drastically
reduced to a few simple offerings. Missing are the savory specials of the
talented chef, whose last creation required five years and 30 pounds—not of
ingredients but of paperwork—to gain approval from the New Recipe
Administration.
You
want to order steak, but serving it requires that the chef call a central
office to obtain pre-authorization. Because your are allotted only 30 minutes
to dine, with a long line waiting to slide into your barely warmed seat, you
order hamburger instead. You notice your neighbor eating steak—and sitting at
the best table. You remember a time when he was unemployed and you bought him
dinners. Then, he thanked you for your charity and quickly got another job. But
that was before he had “rights” to his food. Now, he has permanently quit
working and spends his time milking the system so that he can eat off your tax
dollars.
You
barely recognize the frazzled chef sitting in a corner, buried in paperwork.
The once lively, happy figure doting over your every need now slaves for a new
master, one that runs him ragged, denying his fee for serving Cognac,
second-guessing his decision to make soufflé, requiring a special certification
to buy a new oven. You know that under Foodcare he works twice as long for half
the pay and merely bides time till retirement. When he goes, you doubt he’ll be
replaced because enrollment in chef’s schools has dipped as the number of
bureaucrats hounding them has risen.
Having
dispatched your restaurant ration, you proceed to the supermarket to exercise
your "rights" under another provision of Foodcare, which covers
retail operations. Since you are now a public-aid case and no longer a
customer, there is little need for customer service. Gone is the kaleidoscope
of colors, tastes, and smells in the gastronomical paradise that was the
American supermarket. No more bountiful rows of edibles that were a testament
to the prosperity and individual tastes of the patrons and to the
entrepreneurial genius of the providers. You rummage through splinter-ridden
crates that keep food hidden so that you will not take too much and
burden society with your mastication. Your once welcomed business is now
dreaded by the manager, since the Foodcare Utilization Board fined her for
giving you too much salmon and denied her payment for the steak she let you
have without first checking with her regulator.
You
settle on chicken, a creature as hapless as you. The gourmet coffees and
chocolate cakes you loved were removed from the formulary. Because Foodcare
could not afford to give them to everyone for free, now no one can buy them at
any price. You join a line of hungry masses—your once proud, self-supporting
neighbors who now live off the public dole, waiting for cheerless checkers to
process their identification cards and claim forms.
Time
passes, and everyone forgets how it happened, but the quality of food and
service deteriorates. The taxes you pay for Foodcare far exceed the bills you
once paid when you bought your own food and did not obtain it for “free.” Then,
you didn't pay for bureaucrats, inspectors, and agencies to tell you what to
eat, or for those milking the system like your neighbor. Besides emptying your
wallet, you realize that Foodcare has drained all the pleasure you once derived
from eating.
You
notice that the worse the crisis gets, the more the politicians play the blame
game. It seems that everyone is at fault but them and their program. The big
food companies are to blame, so laws are passed to cut their prices and seize
their profits, causing them to stop offering new products or to go out of
business. The big retailers are to blame, so laws are passed to regulate them
even further, which is costly for them, so the price of food skyrockets from
what it was before Foodcare was enacted. The chefs and grocers are to blame, so
laws are passed to cut their pay, insuring that none may ever have a Mercedes
in his garage while anyone goes hungry, causing more of them to flee their
profession.
You
realize that the food industry has been destroyed. But the statist politicians
are unmoved by it. They have achieved their moral ideal of giving people
free food as a "birthright." You wonder: Is there something wrong
with this picture? The ideal isn't wealth, prosperity, happy chefs
and grocers who earn a good living in return for the financial risk they take
in their businesses, and satisfied customers who enjoy a Shangri La of readily
available, affordable food. The ideal isn't a spectacular abundance,
with no one starving, with everyone's standard of eating—including the
poor—raised dramatically, and all of this achieved without victims, i.e.,
without the use of government force to fleece the taxpayers and to rob
consumers and suppliers of their freedom to make their own choices and deal
with one another voluntarily. The ideal isn't the private system, in
which the American house pet—with no "birthright to food" guaranteed
by any government—eats better than the citizens of countries with actual
Foodcare programs, such as North Korea.
Instead,
the moral ideal is to transform self-governing, self-reliant, free Americans
into state-controlled puppets, not allowed to think or act for themselves. Who
gains from this? The Wizard-of-Oz pretenders to status that are the statist
politicians, who show no scruples in trampling over our freedoms for the sake
of their power grab. Who else gains? Those motivated by envy, who resent a
person's ever acquiring anything more than anyone else—even a cup of gourmet
coffee. This is what's touted as a moral ideal.
The
Foodcare scenario described here is actually playing out in medicine. Once the
gold standard of the world, American medicine and the health insurance industry
are falling to their knees from decades of crippling regulation, with the final
blow to come from “single payer,” the ultimate dream of the statists—the total
replacement of private enterprise with a complete government takeover of
medicine. To stop this tyranny we must repudiate the allegation that healthcare
is a "birthright." Liberty is our birthright. And liberty is,
in Thomas Jefferson's words, "unobstructed action according to our will
within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." This means
we have a right to act, i.e., to get a job (if someone is willing to
hire us) and earn money to pay for the things we need. We do not have any
"birthright" to seize the money of others and control their
activities, thereby violating their liberties, in order to provide for us.
If
a thief picked our pockets and claimed it was for a good cause, we'd reply that
there can be no good cause whose means is thievery. When our government picks
our pockets and claims it's for a good cause, our reply should be the same.
Universal healthcare is based on a bogus "birthright" to medical
treatment that can be achieved only by government coercion and plunder of
innocent citizens. It is neither benevolent nor moral. It is tyranny.
Genevieve (Gen) LaGreca is the author of
Noble
Vision, a
ForeWord magazine award-winning novel about a doctor's
fight for freedom in a state-run health system. She may be contacted at
genlagreca[at]hotmail[dot]com.
An earlier version of this article was published in
the Los Angeles Daily Journal,
6/27/07, titled “New Meaning for ‘Sicko’: Universal Healthcare is a
Prescription for Disaster.”
Copyright © 2014 by Genevieve LaGreca. Permisssion to
reprint is granted with proper attribution to the author.
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