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Churchill said, “All men make mistakes but wise men learn from them.”

If Diogenes was looking for a wise man I don't think he'd start the search in Washington DC.

The following information may be of interest to those who are considering this subject. The articles come from the American Association of Physicians & Surgeons web site and originally were published in 1999 and 2000. The two physicians who wrote these letters expressed great wisdom and love for liberty.

“Dr. Nino Camardese of Norwalk, Ohio was honored to be a guest speaker at the 27th annual national convention of the American Academy of Physician Assistants which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, May 29-June 3, 1999.

“Approximately 6,500 attendees registered at the convention. Dr. Camardese lectured about today’s state of medicine and protested the violation of many Constitutional safeguards contained not only in the Bill of Rights but also in the Medicare law Sections 1801, 1802, and 1803.

“Bravo, Dr. Camardese!”

“Correspondence (May/June 2000)”

Re: “Slouching Towards a Duty to Die”

Dear Editor,
The contents of your article “Slouching Towards a Duty to Die” (Medical Sentinel 1999;4(6):208-210) are so sad, unfortunately. The article is superb and accurate.

I have been in solo practice now for over 45 years. I still make house calls. Beyond that I oversee three active educational foundations and do radio and television programs, as you know, to halt unlawful government, and preserve our foundations of liberty and the ethics of Hippocrates.

So often, however, we hear too many of our colleagues say “I am too busy, I really haven’t got time” -— in fulfilling the responsibilities of citizenship and do all possible in gratitude and thanksgiving to preserve, protect, and pass on our great American heritage and legacy of freedom — even for the sake of future generations, if you will.

As often as not, my humble response is -— “Yesterday hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, died all over the world. But, by the grace of God, you and I are still alive! We are still here! We do have time! We must critically prioritize as to what to do with the gift of time! God said -— “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added unto you.” And again -— “What will it avail man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul.”

Freedom is the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to do that which ought to be done and not do that which ought not to be done -— according to the Law of God, Moral Law, Natural Law, the Declaration of Independence, and the U. S. Constitution.

Freedom and responsibility are mutual and inseparable. To the extent one departs from the responsibilities of freedom, one progressively compromises freedom - to its demise, and to the ultimate demise of a free society.

The greatest contemporary moral leader and perhaps the greatest for many centuries, Pope John Paul II, has recently stated that apathy is worse than hatred.

We the people hardly take time to fulfill our responsibility of American citizenship. During the last election, less than 32 percent of the eligible and registered voters voted; among physicians it was even less.

Millions upon millions of sons and daughters of America have fought, suffered, and nearly two millions died to pass on to us our great American heritage and legacy of freedom. Are we not betraying them and future generations by our indifference not to halt unlawful government?

In addressing the responsibilities of private practice the physician cannot, must not, compromise the ethics of Hippocrates.

Patrick Henry, who would have chosen death rather than slavery said - “Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (Maximum material security is a lifetime prison sentence!)

I think we ought to act and halt further unlawful government intrusion, invasion of patient privacy and erosion of medical record confidentiality. I doubt any other medical group will act as swiftly and resolutely as AAPS, the Delta Force of American Medicine and the Patrick Henry Bunch. If we fail to act on the Unique Patient Identifier, then we will have delivered the medical profession to authoritarianism and old-style socialism.

Nino M. Camardese, MD
Norwalk, OH

Health Care and the “Distributive Ethic” -—
“Natural Rights” vs. Socialism

Lawrence R. Huntoon, MD, PhD

In view of Dr. Faria’s essay, “Is There a Right to Health Care?” in the July/August 1999 issue of the Medical Sentinel,(1) and an editorial which appeared last year in The New England Journal of Medicine,(2) which spoke of a “distributive ethic” akin to corporate socialized medicine, and the collectivist drive toward a right to medical care in America with new proposals for a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to accomplish such a right,(3) I would like to expound on this issue which is of utmost importance for the survival of the profession and what remains of private medical care.

We are told in Dr. Kassirer’s editorial that physicians who agree to the distributive ethic of managed care essentially become agents of the Plan instead of advocates for the patient.(2) According to Kassirer, the fundamental flaw in today’s health care environment is the lack of egalitarianism -— nationalized health care (socialized medicine). He tells us that “a system in which there is no equity is, in fact, already unethical.”(2) But aside from the fact that ethics is a quality of character that applies only to people not to “systems,” his proposed solution of nationalized health care suffers from the very flaw of “population-based” medicine and “distributive ethics,” things which the author tells us are very bad. To illustrate the point, we need only change the word “plan” in the author’s quote to “government.” His quote would then read, “In agreeing to a distributive ethic, are physicians tacitly becoming agents of the [government] instead of agents for their patients?” The answer is a resounding Yes!

Again, we need only look to our Canadian neighbors to see the reality and horrors of government-run, distributive medicine. “Both patients and physicians are jumping ship as the Canadian single-payer system begins to sink.”(4) Canadian citizens are now buying personal medical insurance that pays for care in the United States, care that they can’t get in their “wonderful” government-controlled system when they need it. Canadian physicians are also leaving Canada in droves, making the already existing shortage of physicians in some areas and in some specialties worse.

Dr. Robert Jackson, who left Toronto several years ago to practice in Dallas, Texas, explained his move by saying that “I don’t like being considered the bad guy all the time. Physicians are held responsible for the constant cuts. At the Orthopedic and Arthritic Hospital in Toronto, wards were closed and the staff had to sell pizza to pay for repairing the elevators.”(4)

Dr. Jackson also tells us that staff physicians were limited to 25 joint replacements per year. But what do you do if you’re the 26th person in line...eh? Government doctors in Canada work long hours for low pay and at times are expected by their government to work for no pay. Most spend on average two hours a day (unpaid labor) filling out government forms. Dr. Jackson’s diagnosis? “Pathological Egalitarianism.”

There are those who are constantly trying to convince us that egalitarianism is the only moral and ethical choice in a society where people have unequal houses, unequal cars, unequal food, unequal money, and yes, unequal medical care. We are told that the only way to fix this inequality is for Big Government to confiscate the fruits of one’s labor and “redistribute” them for the greatest good of the group. But this “distributive ethic” -— From Each According to His Ability and To Each According to His Need -— is actually nothing more than socialism, a concept which has failed miserably everywhere in the world that it has been tried. “Universal coverage” translates to minimalist coverage (as in managed care), delayed access to medical care, and often no access to medical care. All of which begs the question: How is forcing everyone into government-run minimalist coverage and lack of timely access better? As Walter E. Williams observes, “Capitalism isn’t popular but it works.” It has provided access to more goods and services for more people than any other system in the world. But he observes, capitalism isn’t popular because it “is always evaluated against the non-existent utopias of socialism or communism.”(5) The key word is “non-existent” -— there is no socialist utopia. Socialism simply doesn’t work!

Trying to link human rights to a “right to health care,” such as has been done under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,(6) Article 25 is a truly unAmerican, socialist concept.

Our Constitution is not the UN constitution. Under Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the powers of Congress are strictly limited. The father of our Constitution, James Madison, gave us stern warning about expanding the role of government “with good intentions.” He said, “With respect to the words General Welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by it creators.” Indeed, you will not even find the words “health care” in our Constitution. We also note that none of the God-given rights protected by our Constitution involve government taking anything from anyone to satisfy another’s “right.”

The new globalist (socialist) view of “rights,” however, frequently involves government taking from some and giving to others. Although socialists would like to confuse us by trying to convince us that this is charity, it is nothing of the sort. It is what the great French statesman Frederic Bastiat called legalized plunder, and it leads to discontent and destruction of peace in an otherwise peaceful society.

Although egalitarians are always quick to point out inequalities, for some unexplained reason, they never seem to appreciate one of the most glaring inequalities which has brought us to the miserable state of managed care from which we suffer today. There is no tax equity. Because of a peculiar hold-over from World War II, employees buy their medical care with pre-tax dollars, and everyone else has to buy their medical care with after-tax dollars. Totally inequitable and totally unfair. If we had tax fairness and expansion of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), we could put power back into the hands of patients, with advice from their physicians where it belongs. In a true free market, prices are controlled via direct interaction of consumer and seller, something that does not exist today in the medical marketplace. Quality is maintained via healthy competition, not via manipulation by managed care or government bureaucrats. Physicians could practice medicine again in the tradition of Hippocrates as opposed to being agents of mangled care or government care, thus regaining the trust of their patients and respect for the profession. To continue down the wrong path toward more “integrated delivery” or worse, government-run medicine is to sacrifice a noble profession on the false altar of egalitarianism.

References

1. Faria MA Jr. Is there a right to health care? Medical Sentinel 1999;4(4):125-127.
2. Kassirer JP. Managing care - Should we adopt a new ethic? NEJM 1998;339(6)397-398.
3. Davidoff F, Reinecke RD. The 28th amendment. Annals of Internal Medicine, 20 April 1999, 130:292-294.
4. Exodus from Canada. AAPS News, June 1995.
5. Williams W. Capitalism isn’t popular but it works. The Post-Journal, September 19, 1997.
6. Consortium for Health and Human Rights. Health and human rights -— A call to action on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. JAMA 1998;280(5):462-464, 469-470.

Dr. Huntoon is a neurologist in Jamestown, New York, president-elect of the AAPS, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Medical Sentinel.

Originally published in the Medical Sentinel 1999;4(5):177-178. Copyright © 1999 Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).
Dr. Nino Camardese of Norwalk, Ohio was honored to be a guest speaker at the 27th annual national convention of the American Academy of Physician Assistants which took place in Atlanta, Georgia, May 29-June 3, 1999.

Approximately 6,500 attendees registered at the convention. Dr. Camardese lectured about today’s state of medicine and protested the violation of many Constitutional safeguards contained not only in the Bill of Rights but also in the Medicare law Sections 1801, 1802, and 1803.

Bravo, Dr. Camardese!

“Correspondence (May/June 2000)”

“Slouching Towards a Duty to Die”

“Dear Editor,
The contents of your article “Slouching Towards a Duty to Die” (Medical Sentinel 1999;4(6):208-210) are so sad, unfortunately. The article is superb and accurate.