Why I Oppose National Healthcare

Be forewarned: it’s very long and it’s very angry.

Anthony Gregory, who probably thinks I’m a jackass, has a piece on LewRockwell.com about the U.S. Government’s accelerating control over health care in this country. It is very, very difficult for me to react calmly to discussions about national, or socialistic or fascistic, health care, but I’ll try to be dispassionate.

 

We’ve all experienced government restrictions on our healthcare, even if we did not observe them. We have to obtain prescriptions from licensed doctors to get pharmaceuticals; certain substances are prohibited even by prescription; and health insurance is increasingly unaffordable. Health costs have certainly risen: many young people I know would not visit a doctor for routine or even emergency care without health insurance, since they would not be able to afford it. But the subsidization of health insurance has contributed quite a bit to the inflation of health care costs, making it a vicious circle.

 

It seems pretty easy to get the prescription drugs we need without being, say, Elvis or another celebrity who has a Dr. Feelgood on hand. And most medical procedures, with the exception of abortion, are relatively uncontroversial and non-politicized. Sure, cancer patients can be prosecuted for buying marijuana, and the terminally ill are routinely denied opiates, but it’s pretty easy to get your hands on Viagra or its functional opposite, the SSRI.

 

So, I offer a couple of examples of what happens when the government explicitly rations healthcare. The first is abortion. Most feminists are well-versed in what happens when women and girls are either prohibited from obtaining abortions safely or are in a country where medical care in general is hard to come by: they perforate their uteruses with coathangers, are mangled or assaulted by back-alley abortionists, subsequently die of infection, etc., etc. The grim reality is that even if you consider abortion to be murder, when you try to outlaw the practice, you risk murdering the mother.

 

Here’s the possible outcomes, then, when you outlaw abortion: the woman goes to the black market and (we hope) survives; she goes to the black market and dies; she tries to abort on her own and both die; she tries to abort on her own and survives. Or she has the baby and they both survive childbirth, or she dies in childbirth, or the baby does..

 

I’m listing all these possibilities in detail to demonstrate that, at best, outlawing abortion increases the risk of killing the mother, since childbirth has a death rate ten times higher that of first-trimester abortion, at least in the U.S.

 

There is a slightly different medical procedure that rarely has so many people up in arms screaming about life at conception and so forth: organ transplantation. On the whole, it doesn’t stir up controversy the way abortion or even stem-cell research does. I have yet to witness any fiery right-wingers calling for the outlawing of organ transplants, and indeed it remains legal, but with a few restrictions. Make that a lot of restrictions. And in the same way some feminists call for the media to stop writing news reports in the passive voice (not “a woman was raped,” as though rape were some contagion you could catch from the air, but “a man raped a woman”), I’d like to point out that it’s government which passes these restrictions.

 

More specifically, I’m going to quote William L. Anderson and Andy Barnett in their article “Waiting for Transplants“:

 

When Congress passed the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984, authored by then Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, it was supposed to solve the chronic and deadly shortages. Like many other acts of Congress, this one has failed to solve the problem, and has actually made things worse. Gore’s law makes it illegal for individuals to sell organs, whether they come from live donors or from people who have just died. Donor organs are to be made available by altruism, although that standard applies only to potential donors and their families. Legal altruism does not apply to doctors, procurement agencies and hospitals, and, predictably, they defend their turf.

 

Like I wasn’t going to quote a libertarian blog for this.

 

Anyway, thanks, Mr. Gore. While he didn’t quite make the presidency, he is no doubt comfortable, while approximately sixteen patients a day die on the waitlist for organ transplants. They “die” the way soldiers and “collateral” are killed; that is, they don’t drift away painlessly. Organ failure means a slow and agonizing death that may be as bloody as any on the battlefield. The victim’s surviving relatives don’t even get to comfort themselves with lies about patriotism..

 

I’m getting ahead of myself. Feminists righteously and rightfully get up in arms when abortion foes try to propose seemingly innocuous legislation, like parental consent laws and special exemptions to save the life of the mother. Pro-choice feminists not only object on principle to these attacks on women’s reproductive freedom—even the most socialistic among them (and they can get pretty socialistic) probably sense that such laws could create a bureaucracy, and hence intrusion and delay, into a private medical procedure. Women are mad enough that some pharmacies won’t stock EC. What if they had to plead their case in front of a judge first?

 

So what happens when a huge bureaucracy, courtesy of Al Gore, gets to hold the reins on organ transplantation? Do I really have to explain? There will be a black market in organs. But it’s not quite the same as a black market in abortions, as coat hangers are fairly easy to come by, and viable organs are not. This means only the very, very wealthy or the very, very connected will be able to get them through the black market. And they will no doubt be harvested, or extorted, from the poor. (See the Audrey Tautou movie Dirty Pretty Things if you like your politics in cinematic format.) The rest get to languish and die on a waitlist that is “fair” and “equitable” and dares never to “commodify” human parts, the ultimate Marxist sin. It’s fair and equitable the way a nationwide draft would fairly and equitably condemn many to death.

 

Sixteen more people have died on the waitlist today. Thanks, Al. I mean, at least we get to put a face on that particular atrocity. We can’t really talk about “Hillarycare” anymore now that she is far from its only proponent.

 

I just can’t wait to see the new waitlists. They won’t just be for organ transplantation anymore. They’ll also be for kidney dialysis, heart surgery, tumor removal, you name it. Look at Canada and Britain if you need examples. In England, pets are entitled to better veterinary care than humans are to health care, since pets don’t have to wait in queues. Patients frequently have to wait until their cancer is inoperable before they can receive care. Now that’s fair and equitable.

Further reading:

The Becker-Posner Blog: Should the Purchase and Sale of Organs for Transplant Surgery be Permitted?

National Geographic: Organ Shortage Fuels Illicit Trade in Human Parts

A Free Market in Kidneys

The UK Telegraph: Black market organ trade is Baghdad’s new growth industry

Eight Ethical Objections to an Organ Market… And Why They’re Wrong

Organ Agonistes

Deadly shortage – how the federal ban on profit incentive is
killing those awaiting organ transplants