I recently had a shock when my children's pediatrician announced she was closing her office. We love this doctor, she helped us through scary times and was always there with answers when we had medical questions or even seeking general advice about our children. She is closing her practice for financial reasons and those who know the philosophy I follow may assume I am going to blame the government or ObamaCare for this. Well I cannot, I don't have enough information to make that judgement in her circumstance. But I do have two points I'd like to make.
First if the government makes further incursions into healthcare as is proposed under ObamaCare which is currently embodied in the so called Baucus plan physicians will quit or close their practices, they've said so (I'll provide a link later).
Second, on a recent trip to get our daughters a flu vaccine, our pediatrician — upon first facing my wife since making her announcement to close her practice — asked her, "please don't yell at me." My wife was shocked, we were of course both saddened to hear she was closing but we would never berate her for it. I was appalled to learn that other parents thought they were right to yell and insult her for a decision that she made which was obviously painful for her. I think the idea that makes people think they were right to yell at this woman is very closely related to the idea that makes them think they are right to force the doctors, insurance companies and ultimately their neighbors to provide healthcare under government coercion. The idea is that the sick are entitled to some sort of medical treatment above all other considerations including who has to go broke or more importantly who has to be forced under threat of violence to provide it.
This all came to mind when I read Dr. Paul Hsieh's most recent, and quite excellent, op-ed published at Pajamas Media, titled Is Your Doctor getting ready to Quit? I recommend everybody read this as the proposed legislation will impact them.
If you are genuinely interested in the morality and practicality of so called Universal Healthcare — and not just partisan bickering or blatant lies — The Objective Standard has made several of Dr. Hsieh's other articles on the subject available to read online for free: