By Bradley Harrington
“I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind – yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands?” – Dr. Hendricks, from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, 1957–
As the national furor over ObamaCare continues to rage unabated, Dr. Cassell, a Mount Dora, Fla., urologist, has thrown another log onto the fire:
“A doctor who considers the national health-care overhaul to be bad medicine for the country posted a sign on his office door telling patients…’If you voted for Obama…seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years.’” (“Doctor tells Obama supporters: Go elsewhere for health care,” Orlando Sentinel, Apr. 2.)
And, for those who choose to walk into the good doctor’s waiting room anyway, “Cassell also has provided his patients with photocopies of a health-care timeline produced by Republican leaders that outlines ‘major provisions’ in the health-care package. The doctor put a sign above thestack of copies that reads: ‘This is what the morons in Washington have done to your health care. Take one, read it and vote out anyone who voted for it.’”
With statements such as these, as you might imagine, Dr. Cassell has become the center of a firestorm all his own. And what is illuminating about this controversy is not that a doctor is standing up in opposition to impending government-imposed health-care serfdom (something that should have been expected by anyone with enough brains to tie their shoes)–but the nature of the vitriol being leveled against him for doing so.
Rep. Alan Grayson of Florida’s 8th district, for instance, described Cassell’s stand as “ridiculous.”
“I’m disgusted,’ he said. ‘Maybe he thinks the Hippocratic Oath says, Do no good. If this is the face of the right wing in America, it’s the face of cruelty…Why don’t they change the name of the Republican Party to the Sore Loser Party?”
So: if you, as a doctor, have decided that you are opposed to having your profession enslaved by a bunch of “do-good” bureaucrats who in reality are not “doing good” at all, but inflicting irreparable harm on your industry – and if you, as a doctor, have decided that you would prefer not to treat those who view you as a slave to social need, where your thoughts and desires mean nothing and you are not entitled to have any opinions of your own – and if you, as a doctor, have decided that your conscience demands that you protest the enforcement, in violation of your right to engage in free trade, of such policies by posting a sign in your office window–then you, as a doctor, are nothing but a “disgusting sore loser” intending to inflict “cruelty” on those around you.
And if that kind of an attack – which, after all, is Mr. Grayson’s right to make under the 1st Amendment (same as Dr. Cassell’s right to post his sign) – doesn’t make the message against the medical slaves getting uppity perfectly clear, Mr. Grayson has no intention of stopping there.
“He’s licensed,’ Grayson said. ‘There are licensing authorities who will look into what he’s doing, and I hope that they’ll take action…” (“Doctor: If you voted for Obama, seek care elsewhere,” cfsnews13.com, Apr. 3.)
Translation: not content with spewing his hatred of liberty and individualism all over the news and Internet, Grayson now intends on reaching for a government gun to ban Dr. Cassell from his chosen profession.
And here we see the phony window-dressing of doctor licensing as a supposed “guarantee” of medical ability stripped away and revealed for all to see, as just another coercive power mechanism to guarantee compliance: “You’ll do it our way, or we’ll outlaw you.”
If you are a doctor, isn’t the lesson clear? Toe the party line or be crucified. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is being offered to you in the name of “doing good” and love for humankind. You might want to seriously think about taking up ditch-digging or basket-weaving instead.
And, when all of you independent-minded doctors decide that your chosen profession of medicine is no longer conducive to rewards, ability, rationality or free enterprise, and you leave the field in droves, the million-dollar question becomes: where do the rest of us think we are going to get any meaningful health care?
Bradley Harrington is a former United States Marine and a free-lance writer who lives in Cheyenne, Wyo. The original article is available on http://baledger.com/articles/2010/04/07/opinion/doc4bbc859c2ae29427494543.txt