(The Swamp) - My warning this week is about the greatest of "nannyisms" - health care.

Many people in this state and around the country - not a majority, but many - seriously believe that health care is a right, rather than a privilege or a gift. It is an understandable misconception, but it is a misconception, nevertheless.

In the beginning, the magic of medicine was dispensed by the holy man of the tribe and was paid for. If a person could not pay, the medicine man would still help and suck up the loss - his gift. Hypokrites, the famous Greek physician (the name means "answerer" and was also the term used for actors, as well), put into writing these principles of privilege and charity. The legend of Sinueh, the Egyptian, tells how this principle moved him between societies of poor and prosperous, and how, experiencing the wretchedness of wealth without morals, turned, in the end, to treating just the poor, only to find (unlike the movie) that he could not afford to help the poor, if he did not treat the rich. He wound up doing both.

Roman physicians were canny and competent to the level medicine had evolved at that time. Again, the freedom and morals of the successful physician was the help of the poor, and there was treatment for beggar and consul. In the middle ages, medicine still mingled with religion, but there was always treatment for the poor.

Medicine made amazing scientific strides in the 19th century, but the WAY doctors treated patients did not change in this state until after WWII.

I remember, vividly, the day I picked up something heavy at the age of three, in 1949, and had a life-threatening hernia.. Bookie Talbert, who had delivered me, like all good family physicians, had to sew me up on the bathroom floor of our house on Kipling Drive. There was no "meet me at the emergency room," or calling in his partner, or being "off duty." He was a doctor. He did what doctors did - went to you when you needed it or you couldn't get to his house. By 1952, he had an office downtown. His nurse was the meanest woman I have ever met before or since. She gave the shots.

Later in both of our lives, when I came back from college in Pittsburgh, I went to his office for what was then becoming the "new" doctor's practice: bigger office, more nurses. As we talked, the conversation turned to the old days and I asked him how he liked having his new office. I remember him saying that it was great in only one way - he hated to drive. Everything else was somehow wrong - he couldn't get a "feel" for his patients from the office. Even then, he was afraid of what the government might do.

As it turned out, he was right. Little by little, from 1961 on, government "helped" Americans do this, and afford that - all things that could have been handled in different, privately charitable ways. Now is now - people think health care is a right of mere existence. Just because. And each year, health care costs more and more. And why not? "Nobody" really seemed to pay for anything. The government did that. People actually thought that. Many still do.

The point of all of this is, that it has only been since the invasion of humanitarianism by the ideals of humanism, following WWI, that volition and free will have been turned out, today, in favor of state-ordered commands. It's no wonder the system doesn't work. And historically, there is no doubt that whatever they come up with in Columbia and DC will also NOT WORK. By definition, it cannot! For after all is said and done, medicine is a gift of the healer. No government can justly regulate that. Government cannot regulate or legislate morality. Never has worked. Never will.

Think government is the answer? Did you know, that since 1878, there have been over 1,000 federal and state laws and over 50,000 federal and state regulations, set up entirely by government, which deal exclusively with medical treatment. If government as the answer were going to work, it already would have. We're not even counting the drug regulations, which are an unbelievably congested and silly mess.

Treating the non-producers in a society is an act of moral volition. It does not ask what the reason is for the non-production, it merely treats as best it can. The very thought that the have-nots can command anything from the haves is a Marxian fairey tale. There is no logical argument in existentialism which allows a vacuum to have form and mass as its operational milieu. This is important, because Marxism and its incestuous sister, fascism, argue from a milieu of existentialism, and thus are inefficient as systems because of this oxymoron.

This isn't just a convenient syllogism. This is the entire modus of religious free will. God says, in many forms, take your wealth and voluntarily give it up. Giving, voluntarily is an act of salvation for both the giver and the the receiver. It and Grace are all that is needed for a complete believer to be whole in the sight of God. If a society demands taxes for the general weal, it takes away a portion of that free will. Take enough away, and you have no free will and no salvific action - as Mohammed, Saint James, Buddha, and almost any Nevi’im since Moses have said.

But there is more.

Now comes the modern doctor, practicing modern medicine. This paragon of virtue rarely treats anyone who doesn't have the bones to pay for it. The doctor who use to visit the sick in their homes to better understand his patient's illness, now lines up patients like cattle. This is more like the assembly line of Aldous Huxley's "Our Ford," rather than Our Lord.

We also have a complicit General Assembly and Governor who think that Doctors are gods and should be the only ones to say who gets to take what drug. This is understandable if you think the general populace is a bunch of rubes, incapable of intelligent thought. I, myself, have found that the accent doesn't usually dictate the learning level or thinking ability of anyone. Brown countenance or Red neck, it matters not.. All persons are capable of learning and self-treatment to some degree. In principle, however, it is important to note that up until the last 20 years, doctors' prescriptions were EARNEST SUGGESTIONS, NOT LEGISLATIVE DEMANDS. (For what it's worth, illegal methamphetamine labs still proliferate, even though that silly law was passed restricting the selling of pseudoephedrine HCl)

This is also more than a syllogism. If you can't legislate morality and you can't tell people they have no say in taking care of people, then to try to do so makes you guilty of killing not only the soul of humanity, and, possibly the person themselves by your restriction, but the salvific purpose of religion. Could that be what the socialists actually want? God, I hope not.

Insurance companies are blamed, but they have never been more than a clever tontine - easy to understand, easy to manipulate. They just want to make a profit. If the government says "jump," they ask "how high?" If the government says, "Bad dog!," they whimper and roll over. And to make up for the loss, they charge more. They still have a great deal in that "emergency and catastrophic" health policy. Costs a little and saves a lot. But nobody uses it, because the doctors and hospitals can scare the hell out of patients, and because those in power know they can get the price they ask for. For the rest of medicine, as long as the government "guarantees" or "legislates" an entitlement, the price will never go down. Consequently, a lot of people owe a lot of money to the local hospital.

The city hospital is a wonderful example of BIG BIG BUSINESS. It shows. Originally, hospitals were the creation of the medieval Church. Nurses in England were still called, "Sister" up through the 1950's. In the US, clinics were available in large cities in the early 1800's. By the 1900's, many town's doctors who needed a place of convalescence and surgery, opened clinics. By the 1950's though, doctors discovered that they could make a killing (sorry) by treating their patients at the hospital and hide expenses and costs. By the 1980's the doctors, who were already making more money than only the richest of their patients, discovered that if they sold their part of the hospital to a larger organization, they could make even MORE money. As they got bigger, they got sloppier. A hospital, famously named after a city in the upstate, almost killed my son three times. They're huge! Even the smaller but feistier, private hospital, in the same town, named after a medieval Roman Catholic saint, is owned by a gigantic corporation, but they, at least, are run like a small franchise, and there, medicine has always been practiced better. Always.

Oh, and guess what? The legislature passed a bill, some time ago, which allows that business-giant hospital, which has been charging you immoral prices for poor service and rich machines, to steal your tax return and even garnishee your wages. Didn't know that? Now, which legislator allowed THAT to pass. Hmmmmm? But back to the doctors..

The other day, I was having a conversation with a very intelligent and learned doctor - she is tops in her field in this state. She was saying that she hated to see it, but that she was preparing her practice to be regulated by the Feds. At the time, I puzzled at that. But then, I remembered that she sold her practice some years ago to one of these multi-state doctor-businesses and is paid by them. OF COURSE, she would be in favor of medical fascism! She'll be a winner in the big-business/fascist-government cartel. Many, many doctors will be..

One more thing: today, we have doctors, nurses (RN's and LPN's), physician assistants, Med techs, medics, hospitals, clinics, walk-ins, emergency rooms, therapy clinics (mental and physical), therapists (mental and physical), pharmacies, pharmacists, ambulances, medical sales people, delivery services, drug companies, distance surgery, distance diagnosis, robotic surgery, robotics programmers, administrators, webmasters, database techs, managers, and, of course, lawyers, fakirs, new age therapists, etc., etc. And every single one these aspects are controlled by thousands of laws and regulations, many of which contradict each other (betcha didn't know THAT, either.) And you REALLY want government to do to this system what they've done to mail delivery?

Seems hopeless, doesn't it? What can we do?