This decision was not set in stone. I could have gotten out of the military (depending on the career field, they'll let a guy out early) and gone to med school. A few people have done this, both from the military and from other careers. In my case, pre-med and med school would take about five years of college (I was already pursuing another degree), so with school and another two years as an intern, I could have become a doctor by my late thirties. This is certainly not too late to begin a second career, and for a while I considered it.
1993 changed all that. In that year legislation was introduced that would have placed the world's best medical system under the control of the United Stated federal government, and would have greatly reduced the freedom of patients to seek doctors, and doctors to seek patients. Like a lot of people, I paid attention to the news coverage and the debate surrounding the issue.
I heard scary statistics that were intended to convince me that millions of people were in danger of dying from lack of medical care. In fact, the statistics proved nothing.
I heard horror story after horror story about people who needed medical treatments they could not afford. Since we will all die from something for which there is no available treatment, and therefore cannot be afforded by anyone, I fail to see how these people were any more special than I.
I heard stories about how great and wonderful health care is in nations with socialized medicine. Never mind the waiting lists, the drafting of doctors into the military to avert a "brain drain," or the frequency with which the rich and powerful from those nations come the US for medical treatment.
There was one thing I definitely did not hear: What the doctors felt.
It doesn't take much brains to figure out how the government intended to reduce costs: Reduce waste, or reduce the amount of money that health care providers were getting for their work. Let's look at these two strategies for a minute:
Reducing waste: The waste can take several forms: Unnecessary care, unnecessary tests, and unnecessary treatments. But who determines which tests and treatments are unnecessary? If we let the doctor decide (as we presently do) nothing changes. If we let someone else make the decision, then unqualified people are making medical decisions for strangers. Oh, we really can't be sure the patient will die, can we?
And if you think this government is going to eliminate unecessary paperwork, I have a bridge for sale, cheap.
Reducing pay: I know that there is a proper term for doctors who are in it just for the money: They're called quacks. Nevertheless, money is important. Aside from confirming that one is a valued member of the community, few professions demand more of a person, in terms of the skills required for the profession, the immense pressures of the day-to-day work, the heartbreak that comes with each lost patient, and the need to sacrifice the family to the needs of the patient; these all call for the highest rates of remuneration. A single emergency-room intern who does his or her job well is worth more than all of the Mel Gibsons, Elvis Presleys, Michael Jordans of this world, put together, and if you throw in Congress the scale still tips towards the young doctor in the other pan of the scale. I doubt not that many doctors would work for free, if they could live for free, but getting your pay cut in order to meet some bureaucrat's fiscal priorities is a slap in the face that no doctor should have to put up with. And let's not talk about increasing the doctor's workload, while keeping his pay the same.
I know for a fact that unless the encroachment on the freedom of doctors is torn up by the roots and banished from American soil forever, it will grow worse and worse, because that is exactly what has happened over the course of the last thirty years. Today a doctor's medical decisions are his or hers to make. Tomorrow the doctor will still make decisions, but these decisions will be subject to reversal by a senior physician. On the next day, the decisions are the doctor's, but they must be reviewed by another doctor before they are implemented. Still later the doctor makes recommendations, not decisions, which are referred to another doctor—a doctor of business administration, not medicine. Some day, doctors will be given a patient and told what treatment to provide; their judgment will no longer be an asset, but an obstacle.
I'm talking about this sense of control and accomplishment that a doctor will derive from his or her work, because that is what brings satisfaction to the higher callings. Medicine requires a mind that is free to consider every clue and every solution, and when that mind feels powerless, the medicine will suffer. It will suffer especially so when the young people, choosing careers, see what is happening to medicine, and see that other careers still have this sense of accomplishment. Those fields will get more of the best people; medicine will get the rest. It won't happen overnight, but unless the trend is changed, it will happen.
Right now the United States of America has the best medical system known to mankind. If Congress does not clear away the strangling vines of socialism, that system will be choked to death.