HEALTH: Dying for conformity

“Single Payer” health care is not “Healthcare Liberty.” It puts health care in the hands of voters — most of whom are in good health and therefore end up voting in favor of their own wallets. In the United Kingdom, a court ruled that the parents of a child suffering from a mitochondrial disease could not take him to the U.S. for an experimental treatment. Instead their child must die, presumably to maintain the integrity and fairness of their health care system. The parents had raised $1.6 million for the treatment, but the EU courts said that they could not remove him from government custody and that against the parents’ wishes life support was being disconnected.

I consider it an awkward blessing that people of means can suffer the same afflictions as the rest of us. Their desperate attempts to care for their own at great expense to themselves has often led to discoveries that benefit all of us with little or no money out of our pockets. There is much in Mike Joyce’s piece with which I agree — but not the politically controlled decisions regarding life and death that are increasingly a part of government single payer health care systems.

STEVE NOVAK

Coeur d’Alene