Socialized Medicine: Altruism's Poisoned Fruit

by Dr. S. J. Adams

Socialism promises a dream. It creates a waking nightmare. It promises an Eden, but delivers Hell.

Socialized medicine is merely one of the many poisoned fruits offered by altruism.

Altruism is a psychological attack that seeks to associate self-interest with immorality in its victims' minds. Instead of happiness and pride in personal achievement, it seeks to elicit guilt, shame, and humility. It tells man that the things he finds most important he must value least and sacrifice to that which means nothing to him. It demands that the "greater good" (meaning, everything but himself) be his fundamental concern. In this way, altruism ultimately seeks to destroy all values, including and especially the value of one's own life.

An important value for all rational men is personal health.[1]

Health refers, generally, to one’s state of being and its quality. Physical health means that one’s body is energetic and performing well—one is physically able to accomplish a wide range of actions and achieve goals. Mental health means one’s mind is connected to reality—one is mentally focused and uses reason and logic to make judgments, solve problems, and be productive.

If one is physically and/or mentally unhealthy, life can be very difficult. The psychological toll of protracted or chronic illness is enormous. Thus, health, as it’s being used here, is a value that underlies most other values. If one is not healthy, the values he typically enjoys are harder, if not impossible, to enjoy. As proof, just consider the last time you were sick. How did you feel? What did you do? More importantly, what were you not able to do?

Poor health, either physically or mentally, is not a value. It is not a state one seeks to achieve (unless he has significant psychological problems). Illness limits life. When one is sick, he seeks treatment for his condition so that his health returns.

However, obtaining effective treatment requires the knowledge and ability of doctors, nurses, and all the other medical staff. Becoming a doctor requires significant intelligence and extensive education and training. The lives of doctors, especially those in their early careers, are notoriously grueling. The time, effort, and expense these individuals put forth in their trade is very significant, and their knowledge and skills are extremely valuable.

Yet, it is precisely medical doctors and other staff that socialized medicine attacks and seeks to enslave. “Doctors make too much money,” goes the line. “Healthcare is so fundamental a need that we all have a right to it,” goes another.

But needs don’t make rights.

As Ayn Rand wrote, “'Rights' are a moral concept—the concept that provides a logical transition from the principles guiding an individual’s actions to the principles guiding his relationship with others—the concept that preserves and protects individual morality in a social context—the link between the moral code of a man and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law…the subordination of might to right” [italics in original].[2]

In a free and rational society, no group has the right to force an individual to act as they decide. Gangs don’t trump individuals.

Of course, this does not mean that individuals can act recklessly or dangerously. One doesn’t have the “right” to murder, steal, rape, or in any way violate others’ rights. Instead, it simply means that the sheer number of individuals who agree on something is not the standard by which ideas are judged right. If that were the case, then Hitler and Stalin were right. After all, they had the numbers.

A collective is not a single entity that has its own will, reasoning, or justifications beyond the individuals of which it is composed. A collective—a society—is just a group of individuals who organize their relationships around certain concepts, principles, and, ultimately, laws. However, a legal code that places society—the collective—above and beyond the rights of its individual citizens is no longer rational, free, or legitimate.

Altruism is a collectivist ethics through and through. Some of the catchphrases are “the greater good,” “the public interest,” or “social justice.” These slogans are based on a group standard, which supercedes the individual. In other words, there is a "greater good" beyond individual interests. Your private property might be to your self-interest, but it's in the "public interest" for the government to take it and turn it into condos (to generate more tax revenues for more government programs). Although no white person living in America today had anything to do with the slavery of our early history, making them pay reparations to black people alive today will serve "social justice."

As the socialist writer E. Belfort Bax indicated, “Morality in practice means at basis the habit of identifying personal interest with social interest; the satisfaction of self outside of, or even in antagonism to, the immediate interests of self.”[3]

In other words, there is one’s immediate self-interests and a social interest. Morality is putting the latter before the former. But what if one doesn’t want to do this? What if he, instead, focuses on himself?

“History shows the ever renewed attempt and the ever-renewed failure of humanity to reach a higher level by the endeavour of the individual to become regenerate from within, to work out his own salvation irrespective of social conditions. So long and so much as men believe that the first concern of each is with his own character as an individual rather than with the conditions of society as a whole, so long and so much will they be lukewarm in their interest in the cause of social change. No one wishes to underrate the value of personal character, but what we do contend is that men can only change their characters fundamentally for the better indirectly and not directly.”[4]

This passage is so incredibly revealing. First, it confirms Ayn Rand’s observation that altruism is based on and results in a lack of respect for others (see Altruism and Mental Illness: Self-Sacrifice is Mind-Sacrifice). That is, without altruism men will necessarily disregard others and let them suffer. Pursuing one's self-interest means to be an anti-social "lone wolf" who preys on the weak. Thus, for altruists, there are only the Virtuous Weak or Villainous Able.

Altruists are misanthropes, especially toward the able and self-focused. The productive need none of their pity and alms, which invalidates the altruist’s existence. Altruists need others to suffer, and they want them to. Deep within their twisted psychologies, they know that their ideas are wrong and terrible. Or, at least, they know that those they judge to be capable don’t live by their code. In either case, their goal is not necessarily to live up to what they claim to believe; it’s to get you to.

And it is here that Bax's and all other socialists' ultimate intentions become clear. Specifically, if men cannot change their inherently rotten natures directly, meaning, within themselves through self-direction, then they must be made to change "indirectly." In other words, by force.

Force always comes with a rationalization (as opposed to a reason). One of the primary embodiments of this rationalization from time immemorial is that magnificent collective: "the poor."

The poor, by definition, don’t have things. They are in need. Furthermore, their needs are fundamental: food, clothing, shelter. They are frequently in poor health. Without basic needs being met and poor health, how can one expect them to be productive, taxpaying members of society? "People can’t work on empty stomachs." "Their needs are so basic that, by god, they have a right to them." "If we all just pitched in a bit, we could get them these things, they’d get back on their feet, and we, as a whole, would all benefit." "We will have achieved a greater good." "In fact, not pitching in would be to deny the poor their fundamental rights." "Withholding from the poor what they need and, therefore, have a right to is criminal." "We need laws that ensure everyone has what they need and are entitled to." "So, let it be resolved that we, as a society, have a right to any individual’s property that can contribute to the greater good." "Yeah, if you already have a loaf of bread, you don't need two—the extra one goes to he who needs and, therefore, has a right to it." "The individual has no right to claim as his own that which would achieve the greater good through public disposal."

Okay, has the good doctor gone too far and been too dramatic? Is this really what altruists mean and seek through their system of socialism?

“Socialism, reduced to its simplest legal and practical expression, means the complete discarding of the institution of private property by transforming it into public property, and the division of the resultant public income equally and indiscriminately among the entire population.”[5]

“The production of society is used for the benefit of all humanity, not for the private profit of a few.”[6]

Socialism is “the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”[7]

This is what altruist-socialists want. They don't believe in private property, except perhaps in marginal cases (such as the legal allowance of owning your own toothbrush, after everyone else has one). They are not hiding their desires. Of course, socialist politicians in America and some of their constituents will never use such terms openly. They will never admit that this is their end goal. In fact, they will present a facade of freedom and "choice" in a given issue, such as medicine, but that's just to hide who in fact is in control behind the scenes.

To socialists, doctors and nurses are not individuals; they are merely a part of Society. Their “means and instruments”—their knowledge, dedication, skill, and effort—belong to Society. If Society, as an entity unto itself that is greater than the individuals of which it is composed, decides that some will get free healthcare, It’s will be done.

Of course, nothing is free. Socializing medicine can only be accomplished through taxation, which means the forced removal of private property by the government. Government bureaucracy is notoriously expensive and service quality is highly mixed, if not mostly poor.

More importantly, socialized medicine will cripple the minds and productivity of those who seek to cure illnesses and save lives. Instead of focusing on advancing medical knowledge and discovering breakthroughs, doctors and medical staff will be forced to think more about compliance to rules, filling out forms for approval of their decisions, ensuring equality of treatment rather than quality. Over time, there will be more and more controls that tell doctors what they will specialize in, if anything, where they will practice, and how much they will make.

That will be the end of quality medicine in America, and it will have all been done for the "greater good."

As I indicated earlier, the preachers of altruism know their ideas are bankrupt. So do many doctors and other medical staff who have been enslaved in these systems, such as in Canada. They are leaving the public systems and opening their own private practices, essentially disregarding the law (it is illegal in Canada to have any private purchase of medical treatments or private practices). These medical professionals have tasted the fruit in altruism’s garden and, unlike the socialist bureaucrats, are qualified to determine poison from food.

[1] The subjects of health standards and personal choices regarding unhealthy behaviors are a part of this issue, but are too much to be included here. Instead, I’m describing health in a general but fairly fundamental way to illustrate a separate point.

[2] Ayn Rand. “Man’s Rights.” The Virtue of Selfishness; p. 108-109.

[3] E. Belfort Bax, The Ethics of Socialism, Justice, 14th November 1889, p.1. http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1889/11/ethics.htm

[4] Ibid.

[5] George Bernard Shaw, http://www.britannica.com/nobel/classic/C00013.html

[6] Socialist Party USA, http://sp-usa.org/principles.html.

[7] Socialist Party of Great Britain, http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pdf/spe(1975).pdf.