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Karl Comment: Any form of socialized medicine runs into the unsolvable problem -- people will always want more of something that is free. Socialized Medicine has to invent ways of rationing care in order to counter this natural human tendency. Every "way" of rationing care runs into the common sense of the world economy. Even among "socialized nations" they operate within the world economy on a free market basis. Thus, a Socialist form of medicine in Britain makes heart health care hard to get. The rules in India are different, even if much of Indian medicine is also socialized. It is to be expected that Time Magazine would glorify socialized medicine as it works hard to ruin all of American Society.
Britain's heart patients may undergo operation in India
In a bid to overcome the long waiting lists in Britain's National Health Service (NHS), some patients suffering from heart and lung ailments may be flown to India for surgery quickly and at almost half the cost, a media report said on Sunday.
An Early Apostle of Socialized Medicine
Sigerist had spent years conducting comparative studies of ancient and modern medical cultures, and eventually concluded that medicine must undergo an evolutionary process that ends--by necessity--in socialized medicine. As a society became more complex, contended Sigerist, the medical care of its citizens could not successfully be left up to the individual.
'Universal health care' Thomas Sowell
Profit was defined as "overcharge" by George Bernard Shaw, one of the founders of Fabian socialism. "Never speak to me of profit," India's Prime Minister Nehru once said to his country's leading industrialist. "It is a dirty word."
Why are such conceptions of profit no longer as common as they were 50 years ago? Because of half a century of experience with economies that tried to operate without profit. Back in the 1950s, socialism was the wave of the future and countries around the world tried out one variety or another.
APRIL 2000
Pioneers of Advocacy
· · · · · · · · · · · ·
An Early Apostle of
Socialized Medicine
By Barbara J. Kiviat '01
Like the men throughout history whom he studied, Henry E. Sigerist was a medical man intimately connected with his times.
When the Swiss national came to Hopkins in 1932 to be director of the Institute of the History of Medicine, the field was still a fledgling one, the institute the only one of its kind in the U.S. By the time Sigerist returned to Switzerland in 1947, he had shown 15 years' worth of medical students the importance of putting medicine in its historical context, taught the first history of medicine class on the Homewood campus, and counseled a nation in the midst of depression and healthcare crisis.
Sigerist began his own university studies in Oriental philology but found his professors' insistence on specialization unsettling, and so switched to studying medicine. After serving two years as a physician in the Swiss army, he took up the study of the history of science at the University of Leipzig. At the age of 34, he assumed the directorship of that university's pioneering Institute of the History of Medicine, where he remained until he came to Hopkins.
When Sigerist arrived in Baltimore, the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt was president, and national healthcare coverage was one of many programs being discussed and developed to ease the economic and social problems of the country.
Sigerist had spent years conducting comparative studies of ancient and modern medical cultures, and eventually concluded that medicine must undergo an evolutionary process that ends--by necessity--in socialized medicine. As a society became more complex, contended Sigerist, the medical care of its citizens could not successfully be left up to the individual.
As an advocate for nationalized medicine, Sigerist took the medical system in the Soviet Union as an example. He traveled there many times, and after close study of the country's healthcare system, published Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union in 1937.
Here in the U.S., Sigerist's views and respected stature as a historian of medicine drew him into the national debate over healthcare, and soon he became a public figure and spokesperson for compulsory healthcare insurance. He appeared on the cover of Time on January 30, 1939; the accompanying article described him as "the world's greatest medical historian." "In the early 1930s he became known to U.S. physicians as an articulate apostle of socialized medicine," wrote Time. "No man's arguments are read by either side of the socialized medicine controversy with greater respect."
Sigerist was at the height of his popularity. Putting his scholarly research on hold, he traveled extensively to speak in favor of compulsory health insurance and wrote articles for the New York Daily News and Atlantic Monthly.
Sigerist's left-wing stance and fondness for the Soviet Union were never unanimously embraced by policy-makers or members of the American Medical Association, but throughout the 1930s, he was nevertheless a favorite lecturer and dinner guest of liberal thinkers.
That began to change in 1939 with the signing of the Nazi-Soviet pact, and growing American disfavor of the Soviet Union. With war in Europe, public attention quickly faded from the issue of comprehensive health legislation, and public opinion backlashed against Sigerist. After a haphazard remark that seemed to justify the U.S.S.R.'s invasion of Finland, Sigerist was assailed in newspaper editorials. University administrators received irate letters from alumni, showing concern about a man of Sigerist's opinions holding such a prominent position at Hopkins.
Sigerist quickly retreated from the public spotlight and resumed his scholarly pursuits, publishing books in 1941 and 1943. But he could not remain completely severed from the people who had come to count on him as a valuable ally.
In February 1944, Sigerist met to advise U.S. Senators Wagner, Murray, and Dingell, who had introduced a bill proposing a national system of health insurance. In April, Sigerist received a letter from the Civil Service Commission telling him that he was no longer eligible for government service. He had displayed too much interest in the political and economic theories of Communism, the letter said, and his service was no longer needed.
Rejected and disillusioned, Sigerist plowed ahead with a successful career as an international consultant. He sat on a committee charged with long-term medical and public health planning for India. And he headed a commission in Canada that laid the groundwork for that nation's socialized healthcare system.
Sigerist returned to Switzerland in 1947 to work on a projected eight-volume History of Medicine. He received positive reviews for volume 1, published in 1951, as well as the first William Henry Welch Medal for outstanding scholarly achievement from the American Association for the History of Medicine.
Sigerist died in 1957, but not before bringing the history of medicine to the forefront of the field of medicine and the public consciousness.
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'Universal
health care'
Thomas Sowell
May 6, 2003 |
If there was one defining moment in the debates among an already crowded field of Democrats seeking their party's presidential nomination in 2004, it may well have been when Congressman Dennis Kucinich, pushing for government-provided health care, spoke with obvious disgust of the "profits" of the insurance companies and provoked a burst of spontaneous applause from like-minded members of the audience.
Insurance companies, like every other kind of institution, have to earn money in order to keep functioning. So does every individual who was not born rich. But some people react to the word "profit" with automatic responses, like Pavlov's dog.
Such prejudice against a word was far more common half a century ago than it is today. Congressman Kucinich may think of himself as a "progressive," but he is in fact a throwback to a bygone era.
Profit was defined as "overcharge" by George Bernard Shaw, one of the founders of Fabian socialism. "Never speak to me of profit," India's Prime Minister Nehru once said to his country's leading industrialist. "It is a dirty word."
Why are such conceptions of profit no longer as common as they were 50 years ago? Because of half a century of experience with economies that tried to operate without profit. Back in the 1950s, socialism was the wave of the future and countries around the world tried out one variety or another.
With profits eliminated, in theory there should have been lower prices for the consumers, who would now be able to afford a higher standard of living. In reality, countries that went the socialist route found themselves falling farther behind countries that allowed the hated profit system to continue to exist.
Naturally, political leaders with the vision of a government-controlled economy did not want to admit that they were wrong, much less have the voters realize that they were wrong. Only when decade after decade of blatant evidence from around the world became undeniable did governments begin to withdraw their suffocating controls and sell government-owned industries to private entrepreneurs.
But, just as there are still pockets of resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan, so there are still holdouts like Congressman Kucinich and like-minded Democrats. Socialism has been discredited as an explicitly avowed belief but it still lives on in a thousand disguises, of which "universal health care" is just one.
Like so many pretty words used in politics, "universal health care" is seldom examined in terms of what its actual track record has been in the countries where it has been tried.
Probably the first country to have universal health care provided by the government was the Soviet Union. After decades of socialized medicine, what was the end result? In its last years, the Soviet Union was one of the few countries in the world with a declining life span and a rising rate of infant mortality.
But that terrible word "profit" had been banished and apparently that is what matters to the true believers.
Not all countries that tried socialized medicine went as far as the Soviet Union. But there has been a whole pattern of problems common to government-controlled medical care systems, whether in China, Britain, Canada or elsewhere. And none of the anti-profit zealots want to talk about any of those problems.
None of those who wants us to move in the direction of Canada on health care ever faces the question: Why do so many Canadians come to the United States for medical treatment and so few Americans go to Canada?
Could it be that we should look at what actually works, rather than what sounds good? Nor should we be overly impressed by words that sound bad, like "uninsured Americans." The bottom line is medical care, not insurance. People without insurance are treated at hospitals all across America every day.
Before we even consider throwing away what works in favor of something that has failed repeatedly, we need to stop reacting to words and start looking at facts. Socialism by any other name is still socialism -- whether it is advocated by shrill zealots like Kucinich or by other Democrats whose words are smoother.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
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