Health Care as a DMV Operation.

PositionLife in America - Department of Motor Vehicles

A few years ago, computer programs, algorithms, and glorified Google searches were touted as the replacements for a physician's analysis of a patient's medical condition. Compressed medical research is quite useful for clinicians who are presented with novel situations and have no readily available colleagues with whom to discuss the case. However, the purpose of flow charts should not be to replace the brains of busy clinicians or, worse yet, be a cookbook for the practitioners at drugstore clinics.

Medical technological aids have now jumped the shark. An unbelievable, but--thanks to cell phone video--verifiably true news report detailed how a robot rolled into a patient's Intensive Care Unit cubicle and a physician's talking head appeared on the robot's "face" and told the patient the sad news that he had a terminal illness. While remote medicine is reasonable in rural areas where access to medical care is limited, telling a patient he is going to die from a TV screen is a crime against all medical ethical principles.

We certainly can expect more medicine by proxy as larger corporations and the government take more control of our medical care. The patient becomes secondary to the goal of 'Value-based care" or some other medically meaningless metric developed by government bureaucrats to give the appearance of managing costs. It is highly unlikely that the ruling class (aka legislators) or elitist wannabes (aka limousine liberals) would tolerate a robot doctor--and neither should we.

However, people are waking up to the incremental erosion of their freedoms, and they are using the free market to find ways around being treated like mindless cattle. In California, where there is a three-month wait for an appointment at the Department of Motor Vehicles, for a modest fee a private company will get you an appointment in two weeks. For a little more money, it will have a surrogate stand in line in your stead. Almost on cue, our fearless leaders put forth a bill to outlaw the service because it is "unfair." What is unfair is a monopolistic...

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