September 8, 2008 8:30 AM

 

The Horrors of the Committee

Picture the dingy functionality of a municipal meeting room--industrial carpet, folding metal chairs, empty walls, a box with weathered pencils next to a stack of empty speaker slips. You have waited two hours for your turn. When you step up to the microphone and face three committee members, only one of them makes a slight effort to smile encouragement.

 

Committee Member #1:		"It says here you need a gall bladder operation."
You:		"Yes. I have waited eighteen months."
Committee Member #2:		"We'll get to that. It's better if you just answer the questions as we put them to you. In the interests of time."
You:		"Very well"
Committee Member #3:		"Your records indicate you have been given some dietary recommendations. Have you followed them?"
You:		"Yes I have."
Committee Member #1:		"Your records indicate you are not the only provider for your family?"
You:		"That is correct. My wife works, and my daughter contributes as well. We can't really pay the rent unless--"
Committee Member #2:		"Once again. If you would just answer the questions and skip the editorializing."
You:		I wasn't editorial--
Committee Member #2:		Mr. Slipowitz! There are a lot of very needy people in this room--some of them who have faced the challenges of single parenthood. We want to hear from those people as well. Don't you agree they need a voice here as well?
You:		Of course. I just--
Committee Member #3:		On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worse, how would you rate your pain?
You:		10
Committee Member #3:		..and yet you are here, speaking for yourself.
You:		Your rules require that I appear--.
Committee Member #2:		We know our rules, Mr. Slipowitz! Unless you stop this constant rumination--
Committee Member #1:		Let me interrupt. It's obvious that you are in a great deal of pain, and you have our sympathies, but it is important that you are aware that the average wait for a gall bladder surgery is 27 months, with many patients waiting much longer. I do have one question which may speed things up.
You:		Yes?
Committee Member #1:		This month, we have a priority mandate to fulfill. Have you, or any members of your family, ever suffered from any asbestos related work injury?
You:		Uh, no...
Committee Member #1:		Well, let's see here. How about this: Do you have any children who have complained about hetero-normative prejudice in school?
You:		Hetero-norm--? Prejudice? No..
Committee Member #1:		Well, this might be a long shot, but do you have any relatives employed by the ministry of health?
You:		No. I don't believe so.
Committee Member #2		I believe I've heard all I need to hear from this applicant.
Committee Member #1:		(Trying to smile). Mr. Slipowitz. We will do the best we can.

 

It may sound far-fetched, but something like this is really occurring just north of the border, in good old progressive Canada. A friend told us this weekend that her aunt made the trip down here to Southern California, from Canada, to get her gall bladder operation taken care of. She had been waiting for Canada's health care bureaucrats to get around to scheduling her operation for two years, with no success.

"..Socialized Medicine will have to rank as one of the 20th century's greatest crimes against humanity. .."

Socialized Medicine will have to rank as one of the 20th century's greatest crimes against humanity. As inefficient as our health care system is, it is infinitely better than a system that kills service motivation by turning everything over to the state. Health care workers are motivated to help hurting people, to be certain, but they are not saints, and they, like the rest of us, simply don't work very well without having to answer to the market--the free market.

A college friend of mine worked for a heart surgeon who made a fortune inventing new surgical catheters. Would that have happened under a Bolshevik committee system? Why should it bother anyone if someone makes a tidy sum solving a very needy problem? Would a $250,000 a year surgeon put in 8 surgeries a day, if he were paid by the surgery or just by the day he showed up? The collectivist urge to willfully misunderstand human nature would be almost comic, if it weren't so tragic. It's very simple: remove the profit incentive and things get very slow, shoddy, and nasty. (Have you ever been to a social security office?)

A few years ago, I saw a restaurant unloading oak barrels. They were going out of business and they were giving the oak barrels away. I made the mistake of telling the family up here that they were all free. (You can never have enough oak barrels on a living history farm.) I should have just picked them up and charged $20 a piece. The prospect of "free" barrels created a weird sort of tension, where family members began talking about who "deserved" the free barrels more, who "needed" them more.

The market, in this flawed world, is a kind of divine gift to ward off this insanity. You get what you pay for. You decide if it's worth it.

But if you take away the market, you find yourself up in front of the heartless committee, trying to put a measuring stick to your "need" against everyone else's "need."

I'm telling you: socialized medicine, and the prospect of these sorts of committees, is far more horrifying than any Hollywood horror flick. When the Great White Shark cuts you in half, it doesn't ask you take a number, and die politely.

 

 

More of the Farm Journal -- September 7, 2008