Readers have occasionally complained that my 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) 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.
It is no longer to be borne.
Like practically everybody else, my family and I have investigated
various incarnations of "alternative medicine". My ex-wife's family
were friends and followers of Adelle Davis, and we pursued many of the
practices she advised. One of them almost certainly saved my life.
(Before dismissing the great healer's often controversial work, think
of the things the establishment says about Ron Paul.) But either the
alternatives don't work, or government is finding ways to shut them
down.
It ain't brain science, it ain't rocket surgery. Your interests
and government's are absolutely perfectly opposed. Anybody who thinks
the State has any but a _negative_ attitude toward seeing you live
longer, raise your dunce cap. It's exactly the same deal as hospital
readmission. The very last thing they want to see you do is collecting
Social Security checks for more than two point seven (or whatever)
years.
Even more, they don't want anybody around harboring what they view
as "antiquated" political and social values (all you have to do, if
you can stomach it, is listen to Janet Napolitano; she'll tell you
what they're most afraid of: individuals who honor the Constitution
and the Bill of Rights, or as Jeff Cooper put it, aspire to "To Ride,
Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth") messing up the wrecking job that
government education is doing to the minds of our kids and grandkids.
As former Colorado governor Dick Lamm put it in a careless moment, our
job now is to die and get out of the way, presumably of the New World
Order.
Government "healthcare" will help.
Interestingly, the one point that's being left out by both sides
of this issue, is the one point, forgotten by most Americans, that is
absolutely central to me: I don't want it. I don't want it. At the
risk of repeating myself, I don't want it. Anybody here still think I
want it? Think again. This is America, supposedly the Land of the
Free, and I don't even have to say why I don't want it. That's
nobody's business. Ultimately, that reason, all by itself, should be
sufficient:
I.
Simply.
Do.
Not.
Want.
It.
And since medical Marxism is being forced on me, by exactly the
same heavily-armed do-gooders America fought, for better or worse, in
both Korea and Vietnam, the same our fathers and grandfathers fought
in Europe and the Pacific, I will fight it every day, in every way I
can.
For many reasons (I'll bet you can think of a few, yourself), I
have come to believe that the best "alternative medicine" our unique
civilization could institute and practice is to adopt a Constitutional
amendment mandating total separation of "healthcare" and government,
the same wall Thomas Jefferson said (famously or infamously, depending
on who you listen to) he wanted to see erected between church and
state.
Separation of medicine and state.
Remember it.
Separation of medicine and state.
Ask the candidates about it (you'll be disappointed).
Separation of medicine and state.
And pass it on.
