"How Not to Fight Against Socialized Medicine"

Excerpt:

"...Doctors are not the servants of their patients.
No free man is a "servant" of those he deals with.
Doctors are traders, like everyone else in a free society—
and they should bear that title proudly,
considering the crucial importance of the services they offer.

The pursuit of his own productive career is—
and, morally, should be— the primary goal of a doctor's work,
as it is the primary goal of any self-respecting, productive man.

But there is no clash of interests among rational men in a free
society, and there is no clash of interests between doctors and
patients.

In pursuing his own career, a doctor does have to do his best for the
welfare of his patients. This relationship, however, cannot be
reversed: one cannot sacrifice the doctor's interests, desires, and
freedom to whatever the patients (or their politicians) might deem to
be their own "welfare."

Many doctors know this, but are afraid to assert their rights,
because they dare not challenge the morality of altruism, neither in
the public's mind nor in their own.

Others are collectivists at heart, who believe that socialized
medicine is morally right and who feel guilty while opposing it.

Still others are so cynically embittered that they believe that the
whole country consists of fools or parasites eager to get something
for nothing—that morality and justice are futile—
that ideas are impotent—
that the cause of freedom is doomed—
and that the doctors' only chance lies in borrowing the enemy's
arguments and gaining a brief span of borrowed time.

This last is usually regarded as the "practical" attitude
for "conservatives." But nobody is as naive as a cynic, and nothing
is as impractical as the attempt to win by conceding the enemy's
premises.

How many defeats and disasters will collectivism's victims have to
witness before they become convinced of it?

In any issue, it is the most consistent of the adversaries who wins.
One cannot win on the enemy's premises, because he is then the more
consistent, and all of one's efforts serve only to propagate his
principles.

Most people in this country are not moochers who seek the unearned,
not even today. But if all their intellectual leaders and the doctors
themselves tell them that doctors are only their "selfless servants,"
they will feel justified in expecting and demanding unearned services.

When a politician tells them that they are entitled to the unearned,
they are wise enough to suspect his motives; but when the proposed
victim, the doctor, says it too, they feel that socialization is safe.

If you are afraid of people's irrationality, you will not protect
yourself by assuring them that their irrational notions are right.

The advocates of "Medicare" admit that their purpose is not help to
the needy, the sick, or the aged. Their purpose is to spare
people "the embarrassment" of a means test—
that is, to establish the principle and precedent that some people
are entitled to the unrewarded services of others,
not as charity, but as a right.

Can you placate, conciliate, temporize, or compromise with a
principle of that kind?

As doctors, what would you say if someone told you that you must not
try to cure a deadly disease— you must give it some chance—
you must reach a "compromise" with cancer or with coronary thrombosis
or with leprosy?

You would answer that it is a battle of life or death.
The same is true of your political battle.

Would you follow the advice of someone who told you that you must
fight tuberculosis by confining the treatment to its symptoms—
that you must treat the cough, the high temperature,
the loss of weight— but must refuse to consider or to touch its
cause, the germs in the patient's lungs,
in order not to antagonize the germs?

Do not adopt such a course in politics.
The principle— and the consequences— are the same.
It is a battle of life or death."

-from "The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought"
by Ayn Rand

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Additional essays in above book include:

The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine By Ayn Rand and Leonard
Peikoff

Purchase separately here:
http://tinyurl.com/6juau7

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Medicine: The Death of a Profession
By Leonard Peikoff

Purchase separately here:
http://tinyurl.com/66kokq