"If you voted for Obama seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."—from a sign posted on the office door of Dr. Jack Cassell, urologist, Mount Dora, FL
If the comments below the article at orlandosentinel.com are any indication, Dr. Cassell, a registered Republican, has whipped liberals into a frenzy, the thrust of which is two-fold: first, how dare a doctor say anything like that, and second, how dare he politicize medical care.
The first one is easy. It's called free speech and it's protected by the Constitution—even when the expression of ideas liberals find repugnant is involved.
As for the second part, Dr. Cassell has said, "I'm not turning anybody away—that would be unethical. But if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it."
Who, exactly, "politicized" medical care? My nod would go to a Democrat party which passed a budget-busting bill nobody read, without a single Republican vote, in defiance of the majority of Americans. Sorry, my leftist friends, but Dr. Cassell's stance is reactive, not proactive. And let me tell you something else you may not want to know: I'd bet my life thousands of other doctors feel the same way. Why? Here's a fictional doctor who expresses it clearly:
"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun…"—from "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
It still astonishes me that liberals, who claim to own the franchise on superior wisdom, continue to demonstrate an ignorance of human nature that is unparalleled. Who else could possibly imagine that an enormous re-ordering of one-seventh of the American economy, wouldn't produce equally enormous reaction? Who in their right mind doesn't understand actions beget consequences?
Perhaps no one demonstrates such ignorance better than Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA). After corporations announced millions of dollars in write-downs as a direct consequence of a tax in the new health bill—AT&T, $1 billion, Caterpillar $100 million and Deere & Co. $150 million, are three—Henry summoned the CEOs of those companies to testify as to how that's possible.
It's called standard accounting procedures, Mr. Waxman. Procedures required by law in order to protect investors.
In a better world, one of the CEOs Waxman has summoned to his personal witch hunt would tell the Congressman that instead of paying the health care write-down, he will close operations of his company down completely. He would explain to Mr. Waxman that he has no interest in accommodating Democrats' intention to place the private sector under ever-increasing amounts of government control—and that there is no such thing as "altruistic" government without a private sector engaged in naked self-interest.
Revenue-generating self-interest.
He would further suggest that since Mr. Waxman and his liberal friends believe government is the best allocator of goods and services, they should provide jobs for the employees who will no longer have them when he closes up shop.
One of the oldest cons is business involves advertising something with an unbelievably low price in order to get people into a store. When they arrive, they are told that, yes, the price is accurate, but that particular item is out of stock at the moment.
What many Americans will eventually discover is that the new health care bill is a similar con: insurance will be "unbelievably" affordable—but doctors will be "out of stock." Thus, Americans' "right" to health care will end up being what most liberal programs end up being: long on "good intentions," and woefully short of good results. But everyone will be "entitled" to medical services—eventually.
Very eventually, just as they are in all the government-run systems throughout the world where one's waiting time for treatment, and the survival rates for serious illnesses are nowhere near as good as the "evil" system Democrats have tossed overboard in their never-ending quest for "social justice."
Now comes the hard part: first, keeping "rebels" like Dr. Cassell in line, which will likely require Democrats and their media lackeys to vilify or ridicule any professional who dares to defy their worldview—much like the president did when he suggested that a doctor will opt to take out a kid's tonsils instead of otherwise treating a sore throat to "make a lot more money."
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has taken on the role. He has filed a formal complaint with the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Medical Board. He hopes "they'll take action because, frankly, I think a lot of people are disturbed just to go into his office."
I wonder how many people are "disturbed" by Grayson himself. In a House speech he claimed, "Republicans want you to die quickly," because they didn't march in lockstep with Democrats' destruction of our medical system.
But it's going to get harder still. When the number of doctors refusing to see Medicaid or Medicare patients reaches critical mass—something which has already begun to occur—government will be faced with a momentous decision: can they force doctors to see certain patients against their will?
Some pie-in-the-skiers would suggest the alternative to such a scenario would be to create some sort of incentives for doctors. Perhaps they haven't noticed that the reason so many doctors are refusing to see Medicaid and Medicare patients is because the government has already created massive disincentives, by turning such treatment into a money-losing proposition. These are the same folks who undoubtedly believe the health care bill is "revenue neutral," even as every other major entitlement ever enacted has soared light years beyond so-called "cost estimates
Another reality check: how does government keep doctors who want no part of this brave new world from retiring, or convince enough younger Americans to become doctors willing to take orders from government bureaucrats?
They can't—not without trampling on the Constitution.
Perhaps that's what prompted Congressman Phil Hare (D-Il.) at a recent town hall meeting. When he was asked which part of the Constitution authorizes the government to require all Americans to buy a product such as health insurance he answered, "I don't worry about the Constitution on this."
He's not alone. There are plenty of progressives whose concept of a "living Constitution" is a euphemism for making it say whatever they want it to say as a means of advancing their odious agenda. The fact that our ancestors battled over every word contained in that document is irrelevant to these socialist/marxist hacks, for whom there is only one "law" that really matters: the ends justify the means.
So how will it all work out? Ayn Rand's doctor continues:
"I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything--except the desires of the doctors. Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only 'to serve.'"
"That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards - never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind—yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?"
"Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it—and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
Take a good look at that last sentence, progressives. It is the future you have bequeathed for yourselves. It is a future in which you'll always have to wonder whether the person to whom you are entrusting your life is someone who despises you for everything you've done to his—or an incompetent hack, like so many other punch-the-clock, don't give a damn public sector employees.
It is a future in which "fairness" reigns supreme, where the talented and gifted are no better off than the lazy and incompetent, and the ultimate destination is the cruelest joke of all: government-enforced mediocrity. Mediocrity from which members of the ruling elite will exempt themselves and those willing to prostrate themselves before the state.
Mediocre heart specialists and brain surgeons? Stay healthy, progressives. Stay very healthy.
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