1) In case you missed it, insurance company stocks rose after ObamaCare became law. I guess their future profits aren’t a concern for investors. Insurance works by pooling risk. The larger the pool, the lower the overall risk in the portfolio. The problem is that there is less profit in a single, large pool.

2. Doctors are morally entitled to heal the sick. If they choose to make a profit that is their business. Implying a moral equivalent to profit is crazy. Are you implying that the doctors that donate their time to Médecins Sans Frontières are immoral?

3) I have no idea what your last bullet point means. How are we suddenly all beggars in the soup kitchen? I still have the same insurance as before with no changes in coverage. If anything, my insurance has improved since I can’t be dropped for getting sick.

4) The only way I agree with you on the assault on rights is the mandate requiring everyone to buy health insurance. Otherwise, you are falling prey to the same hyperbole that has poisoned the body politic over the last year.

Obama Care is the enslavement of the medical profession. From the tone of the responses from collegues I talked with and on Sermo, an exclusive site for physicians, it is now abundantly clear that doctors are awakening to claim their inalienable individual rights as made explicit in the Declaration of Independence, their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have not been ‘somehow’ exempted from these rights that are enjoyed by all other Americans simply by becoming doctors.

The underlying reasons for such a viewpoint are the generally accepted morality of altruism and, in politics, collectivism. This altruism/collectivism axis demands the sacrifice of all to all. It alleges your duty to sacrifice your values to everybody else as the moral ideal. If you think this through to its logical conclusion, such morality can never be practiced unless you are willing to starve and die. Observe, even Mother Theresa, the poster child of altruism, stopped short of this extreme. And even she felt guiltily inadequate in front of this moral obligation.

Given the acceptance of this irrational moral ideal, altruism as a moral imperative is the handle its ruthless apostles employ, when they tell us that health care is a right to be claimed by all. In essence they allege that they possess the right to claim value from you with nothing in return. This is legalized robbery and extortion. Ayn Rand calls it the morality of cannibals.

Time and time again doctors have accepted this kind of abuse morally as a form of forced charity. This is not entirely rational; but it is the source of doctors’ acceptance of an impossible maze of rules and regulations governing the practice of medicine today. What is different now is merely the fact that Obama has decided to complete the long ongoing process of the enslavement of the profession.

What is our remedy in this context? Ayn Rand once said that what is needed is a moral revolution resulting in the complete repudiation of the imperatives of the altruist morality and replacing it with the morality of self-interest. This moral revolution is the most difficult to accomplish. Selfishness as the concern with the self of each one of us is a fundamental achievement made all the more difficult as the common understanding of the word selfishness equates it with cynical exploitativeness. The teachers of altruism have turned selfishness from a virtue into an intentionally derogatory term making sure that you feel bad should you dare to think about your self.

But the repudiation of the morality of altruism will free the mind from the immoral imperatives towards self-sacrifice and sets it free to truly pursue happiness in life and a chosen career path in freedom and, yes, selfishness. We as doctors have a right to be selfish as we recognize the same right of our patients. We should begin to look at our profession as traders and wear this badge with pride and honor.

Out of this follows that doctors have the right to proclaim with the full force of reputable determination that there has to be a complete separation of Government and Medicine. – (The implementation of this should be left to the experts so that no one gets hurt in the transition.) – Doctors traditionally have always been charitable. The Government’s looters, leeches and moochers have to be taken off our backs and they indeed will run like rats when faced with the moral principles that are based on the rights of man. Of course, this would require that the Government returns to its sole original purpose, the protection of individual rights and is forced to abandon what it has become, the greatest threat to man’s freedom of action in a social context. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada#Economics
“The amount Canadians spend on health care in 1997 dollars has increased every year between 1975 and 2009 from $39.7 billion to $137.3 billion or a more than doubling of per capita spending from $1,715 to $4089.[17] In 2009 dollars spending is expected to reach $183.1 billion ( a more than five percent increase over the previous year ) or $5,452 per person.[18] Most of this increase in health care costs has been covered by public funds.[19]”
In the Province of Alberta, which is one of Canada’s richest provinces (having vast amounts of oil to export) the situation is reported as follows:
“Alberta’s health-care system is wrestling with a $1.1 billion deficit and officials are promising changes to bring down spending.
The Alberta Health Services (AHS) board approved a budget Tuesday for the 2009-2010 fiscal year that includes $10.9 billion in spending on health care, a 13 per cent increase over the previous year. Despite an increase in provincial funding, the board is still $1.1 billion short.”
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/06/30/calgary-alberta-health-budget.html#ixzz0ixW0ZB1T
I suppose that Democrats will argue that due to “American exceptionism” your civil service will be infinitely more efficient that ours in Canada. However, my intuition tells me that your civil service is no more efficient than ours. This health care entitlement is going to become a mill stone around the necks of Americans which leaves open the question …. who is going to stand up for the Free World when American no longer has the wealth to do so.
Those left wing American’s who look fondly at Canada’s Universal Health Care system should be reminded that the only possible way Canadians can afford this luxery is by hiding under the defense umbrella of the U.S. of A. I recognize that Americans want to do something to reduce their spiraling health costs … but socialization of health care is not the answer. Why not harness that engine which made America great …. namely American entrepreneurialism??
I remain
Cameron D. MacKay