Our Medical Tyranny

It is not my purpose to argue for or against any particular system of medical care, whether it be public, charity, private, or any other administrative configuration conceived to make the expensive service of medical attention accessible. Instead, I aim to highlight the dangers inherent in widely accepted truths. A passing reference to the meme of Canadian Healthcare, the ubiquitously maligned NHS, or the oft-noted priciness of the American model may lend credence to these observations. However, these are low-hanging fruits: mere symptoms of the illness found in the public dispensation of funds for public health. Nor do I need to invoke the words of George Bernard Shaw in his infamous inquiry to justify the existence of this particular rot. What I mean to describe is a small set of subtler tyrannies that are shockingly well-tolerated.

First and foremost, reliance upon public coffers for medical assistance places one's medical care within the purview of public policy. There are many diseases and comorbidities derived almost exclusively from the minuscule everyday choices we all make. Obesity and its ilk are the easiest examples, developing from a surplus of nutritional intake in conjunction with a deficit of nutritional expenditure. This can consequently be defeated with a simple plan of eating less, eating better, and moving more. Left unmolested by that straightforward plan, physical and psychological complications pile into a lumbering and elephantine prognosis with a bill of equally massive proportions. We cannot rightly expect the average 300kg behemoth to pay for this bill himself, nor can we reasonably expect such a creature to repay the public debt so incurred. Thus, one asks the obvious question: should we not outlaw obesity? Ban the consumption of poor foodstuffs, restrict the intake allotted to each citizen, mandate exercise for all? This would solve the health crisis and save the public an incalculable expense; all it would take is a small panel of experts in medical science to describe the ideal habits of a healthy man – a feat not short of examples in nature. After all, the wonders of modern technology have made it possible to track any biometric one could name in real-time. Those of us disillusioned by the prospect of a technocracy can take comfort in democracy, where the braying mob decides what we may do to ourselves.

Secondly, and finally, medicine is no different from any other profession in that he who holds the purse ultimately holds the power. It does not matter if a particular treatment option would be effective in the specific case of a patient as long as the holder of the purse strings refuses to accept that option for any number of reasons. Moreover, if the payer willingly pays for unnecessary tests or procedures, the professional gains a powerful incentive to perform those unnecessary tasks. That such activities put the patient at ever greater risk of requiring still more medical intervention to survive is a humanitarian tragedy and a corporate triumph. At this point, there is hardly any need to police the profession for whistleblowers: those who refuse to capitulate to their own greed will be shouted down by those who have profited handsomely from the status quo, a din which will include voices from profitable ancillary industries.

Lest I be accused of histrionics or chasing ephemeral hypotheticals, remember that it was decided to shut down the global economy by making people prisoners in their own homes, to retard the education of a generation, to stunt the speech development of toddlers, to supply a novel injection with no possible long-term safety and efficacy studies at low-to-no costs, to apply financial and social pressure to those who sought a moment’s reprieve from that onslaught, and to retract the licenses and qualifications of veterans in their fields for voicing criticisms of these steps – all in the name of public health and lowering healthcare-related costs while simultaneously generating record profits for certain pharmaceutical companies. Was there a storming of the Bastille, a crossing of the Rubicon, or even a Night of Long Knives? No, people did precisely what they were told, and the professionals did a little jig on TikTok. The medical tyranny I have described is not a mere possibility; it has already arrived.