Reprise for Dr. Alway
Tuesday, October 13 2009
In the comments to my post on his post on ’socialism’, Dr. Alway gives me a lot more grist for my mill. You could read his comments in full, but I will excerpt them here as needed.
Dr. Always claims his “essay is an attempt to get inside the reasonable heads of people who do, in fact, believe these things and to come up with some ‘in principle’ truths.” But virtually nobody in favor of health care reform is an honest-to-God socialist, even especially if you accept Dr. Alway’s definition of socialism (which is fantastically wrong): “those who would attempt to equalize wealth among all adults (in this case, everyone in a nation)”. Literally nobody advocating for health care reform is arguing that it should equalize the wealth among all adults; nobody is even arguing that doctors should be paid less than well for their time and efforts.
So Dr. Alway only succeeds at getting inside the reasonable heads of people who do, in fact, exist exclusively inside his own head. Now a lot of reasonable, non-imaginary people are arguing that health care is a right, and Dr. Alway definitely implied that anyone who thinks health care is a right is a socialist. (And yes, Dr. Alway, I know what ‘affirming the consequent’ is – and I’ve known since before Wikipedia was invented. You got that wrong, too.)
Warns Dr. Alway: “We (including you) should all be open to new ideas, or new perspectives on old ideas, without attacking their source”. Of course I’m open to new ideas. I’m sorry this wasn’t clear, but my problem wasn’t that I thought Dr. Alway had bad new ideas, but that he had bad old ideas. A disingenuous rehash of Ayn Rand’s deeply skewed version of capitalism is not a ‘new idea’, and moreover I’m entirely justified in attacking the source: Ayn Rand was wrong, and also quite stupid in some pretty important ways.
Lastly, Dr. Alway says: “I agree that the government should not control the practice of medicine, including licensing.” This is weasel shit. Sure, maybe Dr. Alway agrees with me, but the fact is that he only actively opposes government reform of health care when it stands to benefit patients. Medical licensing has been the law for decades – since when has Dr. Alway written or protested or even mentioned his opposition to it, until I brought it up?
If Dr. Alway sincerely opposes medical licensing, he should submit a guest post to Kevin saying as much, and explain all the disastrous consequences of medical licensing and what doctors should do to reverse those laws. And once he’s done that, he should start collecting petition signatures, calling his Congresspersons, and making signs. But he won’t – and neither will any of the other pseudo-libertarian physicians who are opposed to health care reform. It’s all well and good to say you’re opposed to government control of medicine in all circumstances, but the reality is that most physicians are totally willing to allow government control when it benefits their prestige and pocketbooks. But when it benefits their patients? Oh, no – socialism!
