Reagan Was Right; He Warned of This His 1961 Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Socialized Medicine

Transcript from Reagan's Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Socialized Medicine.

Now in our country under our free-enterprise system we have seen medicine reach the greatest heights that it has in any country in the world. Today, the relationship between patient and doctor in this country is something to be envied any place. The privacy, the care that is given to a person, the right to chose a doctor, the right to go from one doctor to the other.

But let’s also look from the other side. The freedom the doctor uses. A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms, it’s like telling a lie. One leads to another. First you decide the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government, but then the doctors are equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him he can’t live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder if any of us has a right to take from any human being. I know how I’d feel if you my fellow citizens, decided that to be an actor I had to be a government employee and work in a national theater. Take it into your own occupation or that of your husband. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man’s working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your son won’t decide when he’s in school where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.

Here is an AP article today 12-20-10 "Study maps need for kids' doctors in rural areas".

CHICAGO – There are enough children's doctors in the United States, they just work in the wrong places, a new study finds. Some wealthy areas are oversaturated with pediatricians and family doctors. Other parts of the nation have few or none.

Nearly 1 million kids live in areas with no local children's doctor. By moving doctors, the study suggests, it would be possible for every child to have a pediatrician or family physician nearby.

There should be more focus on evening out the distribution than on increasing the overall supply of doctors for children, said lead author Dr. Scott Shipman of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Lebanon, N.H.

"I worry that it could get worse," Shipman said.

He said medical schools are graduating more students, but the result will be more doctors in places where there's already an over-supply. Indeed, previous studies have shown that doctors locate where supply is already high, rather than in areas with greater need.

Scott Shipman is exemplifying what Reagan was warning about. Shipman is talking about "evening out distribution" and "increasing overall supply" while referring to doctors; Human Beings! Does that not sound a little strange? Since the passing of the health care legislation there has been a change in the whole dynamic of health care. There seems to be a "consensus" that health care is a right, not health insurance, but health care. Now that health care is a right; do we not have the right to demand of those who provide health services to provide them as needed and where they are needed?

It will start with licensing. The state already dictates who can practice medicine; how hard is it to dictate where in the state a doctor's medical license is valid? Perhaps it will be limited by county.

The government is fighting right now for the ability to tax individuals for economic inactivity. If the government thinks that it has the right to tax people based on something they haven't done; how hard is it to believe that the government won't try to dictate the location of doctors based on studies like the one above? Based on what we've scene from Washington recently, is there any doubt that people aren't looking into this now?

What do you think?

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