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By “Mark Andrew Dwyer”
July 22, 2009
For those who know how the "affirmative action" works, the idea of a nationalized health care system must be really scary.
Here is why.
When
you select your doctor or decide which one to let perform a surgery on
you, the only beneficiary of the choosing that you have in mind is you.
If he doesn't look like a doctor, doesn't act like a doctor, and
doesn't carry himself like a doctor, you just walk away. You don't care
about your doctor's hardships while in school and college (or in jail),
nor do you consider such factors as him being of under- or
over-represented ethnicity, the number of kids he has to feed, or
societal desire to make up for past injustices. You simply want the
best doctor that you can afford, period. If you don't trust him, you
look for someone else without even having to explain to anyone the
reasons of your rejection of him.
Well, when federal
bureaucrats will be deciding who is and who is not qualified as your
doctor, they will have quite a different set of criteria and rules.
Their aim will be to increase diversity among doctors and health care
workers, and to help the "underrepresented" minorities move upward (see [1]), but
not necessarily to maximize the length of your healthy life.
And they won't even have such a word as "trust" in their vocabulary.
The
bureaucrats will look into ethnic background of your doctor in order to
make sure that if he is a member of an "under-represented" minority
then he gets the job, unless there is a positive proof that he is not
qualified (with respect to whatever flimsy bureaucratic standards they
might have adopted there). And the fact that he has tattoos on his
forehead and facial jewelry, wears bandanna and gangsta-type cloths,
that his communication skills are more appropriate for a street than
for a clinic, or even that he wears a braided beard, will not be used
against him in order to avoid charges of "discrimination".
Can
you imagine the charges of institutional racism and the following
adjustments brought by the Civil Right Commission after ACLU or other
"civil rights" organization filed a lawsuit alleging that there were
not enough black and Hispanic doctors in the nationalized health care
system? I can. Just like some minorities are being hired and promoted
while better qualified candidates are being passed over, you may expect
the same thing happening in the nationalized health care system. And if
someone, eventually, produces the evidence that the alleged
"under-representation" is not a result of racism but of the fact that
the "desired" minorities have less success rate in passing
qualification exams, the exams will be deemed unfair and biased, and
will be thrown out, watered-down, or abandoned, because of their
disparate impact they have on "protected" minorities. We saw this kind
of "logic" recently in the case Ricci v. DeStefano that judge Sotomayor
(in)famously decided against the firemen who passed the exam for higher
ranked positions but were denied promotion because no black fireman was
able to pass the exam.
There
is absolutely no reason to expect
that the federal government will be any more committed to merits and
objectivity in the nationalized health care system than it is now in
elections (just remember the acclaimed "historicity" of electing the
first black president of the U.S. as opposed to the best one, and all
the slick Gerry-mandering that ensures that
enough "minorities" are elected), government contracts (that gives
preference to "equally qualified" minority bidders), government hiring
(with its "affirmative action" practices that de facto
turn the burden of proof that a minority candidate is not qualified on
the prospective employer), or any other governmental activity that has
to make a distinction between the "qualified" and "not qualified". And
if you think that the courts will make sure that this kind of "noble"
good doing does not wreck the quality of nationalized health care, then
judges like Sotomayor will bring you back to Earth.
A few years
ago, a story about school bus driver who caused an accident killing
several children made national news. It turned out that the driver had
a history of lawbreaking and substance abuse, yet the school district
kept it secret from the parents as it could not refuse hiring him
because of some governmental anti-discriminatory regulations. The
interest of the driver, who obviously needed the job, was certainly
better protected by these regulations than the interests and safety of
the kids that were in the bus he drove. And the effect of this kind of
absurdity were tragic.
Unfortunately, this is a pattern that you may expect to be followed in nationalized health care.
As
it has been the case of virtually all institutions that follow the
"affirmative action" hiring standards, the interest of patients will
slowly give way to the interest of doctors and their families,
particularly of those that suffered from "past injustices" or are
members of "under-represented minorities". The
"qualified/non-qualified" criteria will be set accordingly in order to
make sure that they don't have "disparate impact" on
"under-represented" minorities. The policies that protect the doctor's
well-being, particularly, the "under-represented", will be devised and
implemented. The fact that such policies may lead to suffering and
deaths of the patients will be ignored or, if they make the news,
rationalized out and counter-balanced by "success stories" similar to
Sotomayor's. And anyone refusing to undergo or criticizing treatment by
a "minority" or "affirmative action" doctor will risk charges of
bigotry so that the victims of his medical malpractice do not dare to
voice their concerns anymore.
Remember
that black-run Martin
Luther King/Harbor General Hospital in LA? Although it had been closed
a few
years ago after several patients died there of neglect, its story may
provide you with a glimpse into your medical future. When the federal
government will run the nationalized health care system, you most
likely won't be able to refuse being sent to "minority" institution
like MLK Harbor General for treatment, where you will be
congratulated on your participation in the historic event of the
first black brain surgeon operating on a white patient (you), or else
you will be branded and, perhaps, punished as "racist". If the
government could
enforce busing of school children from one district to another, it will
be able to do a similar thing to the nationalized health care system.
To
make things worse, all kinds of otherwise ineligible crooks and
opportunists will figure out how to use the system designed to protect
"minority" employees, for their (crooks and opportunists') benefit.
Think of felons who "paid their debt to the society" and therefore
cannot be even questioned about their criminal records while applying
for sensitive jobs in nationalized health care. Think of misfits who
flanked their qualification exams but now will be able to take
advantage of the new "fairer" testing standards. They all may end up as
your designated primary care physicians.
The
federal government has been inflicting this kind of ethnic engineering
upon the entire nation for some four decades now, with quite disastrous
effects. And this is exactly what it will do to nationalized health
care. So, when you will be stuck with a weired guy in buggy pants and a
wallet chain who has been appointed your doctor for you in order to
make up for past discrimination that he and his ancestors allegedly
suffered from, when he will misdiagnose your pneumonia or botch a knee
surgery that looked routine and simple before but turned our
complicated after, and when his rude staff will not even try to hide
that the job they are doing there is their entitlement and a form of charity to the
"under-represented" and the "oppressed", then remember my hearty
advise: I told you so.
[1] Racial Preferences in the Democrats' Health Care Bill
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/racial_preferences_in_the_demo_1.html
Readers’ comments: Send yours to readerswrite@yahoo.com. [top]
Past
commentary (July 15, 2009) SOTOMAYOR CONTROVERSY