Here is an excerpt from my novel, Universal Coverage. Think about it while Congress throws the Constitution out the window and your freedom in the trash.
The phone rang. He stared past it at the framed stock certificate on the wall. Something happened between the time his father received his dividends and this day. Smith never envisioned he would face disaster without a penny saved or a dollar in reserve. Nor had he expected to lack the gasoline to go wherever he wanted. The idea that whatever he needed might not be at hand was an absolute impossibility.
This was not the future he’d anticipated nor the one he’d been promised. He wasn’t supposed to be giving a little to get a little. He was supposed to have on demand care without ever seeing the bill. That’s what Universal Coverage meant. That’s what he voted for. That’s what twelve percent of his pay bought.
Without a doubt, it paid for financial security. He wasn’t flush with cash, but nor was he in danger of losing his house, his vehicles, or anything else. He hadn’t so much as seen a bill for any of Timmy’s checkups. But what it did not buy was the timely installation of his son’s pacemaker, something he wanted more than anything else.
He picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“It’s me, Ralph. My cell must have dropped our call. Did you come up with something good for my girl?”
“No,” Smith answered.
“No? Oh, okay. I got it. You need some time. No worries. I won’t say anything to her now. I’ll wait until I hear from you. That way I can sell it to her as a special surprise. How does that sound?”
It sounded pathetic to Smith, who conjured up a witty retort but let it fade inside his growing shame.
“Have a good weekend,” he said, hanging up.
The only person who deserved the money was the doctor who implanted Timmy’s pacemaker. Anyone else was nothing more than a parasite taking something for nothing. Smith was ready to part with any of his worldly possessions, and if he had to mortgage his soul to make Timmy well, he’d do that, too. Either way, he’d be damned if he peddled his wife’s baubles for better odds against the sharks who ran the Universal Coverage pool.
The Bent Page 
Experiment Concluded
The United States of America has always been a work in progress, a grand experiment. Now, the experiment has concluded. Human nature being what it is, the citizenry of this nation have succumbed to the siren call of socialism. In reaction to poor leadership, worse leadership was installed, all by the common vote, all above board. It will be told in history books of the future that this year, 2010, was the one in which tyranny sunk its fangs into the victim, injected its socialist infection, and thereby terminated the best hope for freedom loving souls of the world.
The disease is touted as the cure, healthcare for all as a way to stave off bankruptcy. Only fools believe this. Spending a trillion borrowed dollars, destroying the private efforts of millions, and strangling the future innovation through monstrous regulation will do nothing to improve the economics of the country. At the same time, it will not provide quality healthcare. It will do the opposite as too many places around the world have seen. Consider that in Spain, many medical equipment suppliers wait more than 300 days for payment, sometimes as long as 500 days, and the single-payer system is billions in the hole. The same can be said for Britain, France, and so on. But not in America! This time it will work! This time we’ll get it right! And the dolts and morons chant and cheer: Huzzah to the chief!
Every future healthcare decision will be decided by a blind committee, by some abstractly constructed algorithm. Just as in my novel, Universal Coverage, the body politic will dominate every aspect of future medical endeavors. Citizen will be pitched against citizen as the zero-sum game of the socialist construct spreads through the system. The stain of contempt between once amiable parties will surface where it is least expected. Every act of a medical person will be questioned as a political move in favor of one person over another. Bitterness will be the common bond of a miserable population.
It won’t stop with health care. The socialist march, the tyrannical beast, will scratch and claw until it consumes the energy industry, the remainder of the manufacturing sector, and what pieces of the transportation business it does not already dominate. This animal is never satisfied. After it has consumed the entire wealth of the nation it will turn on itself as it has in every political subdivision around the world.
Thus ends the American Experiment, with a sigh and moan, a plea for the common good. It is a self-imposed failure, the preference of humans for the yoke of predicable mediocrity instead of the magnificent potential of freedom.
God help us all.
- Commentary
on March 19, 2010 at 11:39 pm Leave a CommentTags: comment, congress, health care, healthcare, news, Obama, opinion, politics