Like the vast majority of people, including a growing number of Republicans from the party's populist wing, I am sympathetic to the idea of a healthcare system in which the government ensures coverage for all. There is no escaping the inherent unfairness of a system that frequently bankrupts working-class families for the capital crime of becoming sick. In 2019, two-thirds of people who filed for bankruptcy cited “medical issues” as the driving cause.
Similarly, it seems deeply unfair that wealth plays a determinative factor in both quality of life and life expectancy. It is a fact that lower-income people are less likely to have access to primary and specialty care and therefore are less likely to receive new drugs and treatments. It is no surprise that this portion of the population lives shorter lives marked by higher instances of chronic illness and mental disease.
Such disparities, particularly among children, cry out for correction. After all, a child born poor is no less deserving of quality medical care than a child born rich.
But for those like me who are tempted by the path of government-run healthcare, the case of Indi Gregory, the infant effectively put to death by the British government against her parents’ wishes in mid-November, should temper our enthusiasm for empowering the state in such matters.
Baby Indi, who suffered from a rare mitochondrial disease that required life-sustaining treatment over the course of her eight-month life, was denied the ability to transfer to an Italian pediatric hospital that had taken the extraordinary step of offering to pay for the transfer and treat her. Following an emergency meeting earlier in the month, Italian officials even went so far as to confer citizenship in hopes of facilitating the move. But the British courts denied the request. They even denied the request of the parents to allow the child to be brought home to die.
Instead, Indi died in her mother’s arms at a hospice, which was the only place other than the hospital where the government allowed her to be taken.
The shocking developments, which were largely ignored by British media, raise troubling concerns over the conflict between the right of parents to make health-related decisions for their children and the authority of the state in the United Kingdom. Had the British government simply denied the Gregory family’s request to continue Indi’s care due to a perceived lack of resources, it may have been immoral but not necessarily tyrannical. As in all matters, whoever pays gets a say. And the government foots the bill in a nationalized healthcare system.
But the decision to prevent the Gregorys from pursuing care for Indi elsewhere at zero cost to the government or the hospital indicates a mindset that cannot be described as anything but tyrannical. In this instance, the state believed that its ownership of the child superseded that of the child’s law-abiding parents. And so it cut them out of the decision-making process over the death of their daughter.
If that isn’t tyranny, what is?
Unlike numerous past struggles over extraordinary medical care that carried religious overtones, Indi’s nonreligious father, Dean Gregory, was only motivated to seek additional care out of a desire to save his daughter’s life. Nevertheless, the experience of battling with the government in court convinced him of the necessity to have his daughter baptized. Dean Gregory’s explanation for the decision underscores the true nature of the conflict: “I am not religious and I am not baptized,” he told an Italian newspaper. “But when I was in court, I felt like I had been dragged to hell. I thought that if hell exists, then heaven must also exist.”
To be certain, free market healthcare has its holes and drawbacks. It isn’t a good solution by any stretch to the problem of providing care for the masses. But if it’s the only alternative to a state-run system that is capable of malevolence to this degree, it may just be the best we’ve got for now.
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Peter Laffin is a contributor at the Washington Examiner. His work has also appeared in RealClearPolitics, the Catholic Thing, and the National Catholic Register.
The Indi Gregory saga underscores the perils of socialized medicine
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30.11.2023
Like the vast majority of people, including a growing number of Republicans from the party's populist wing, I am sympathetic to the idea of a healthcare system in which the government ensures coverage for all. There is no escaping the inherent unfairness of a system that frequently bankrupts working-class families for the capital crime of becoming sick. In 2019, two-thirds of people who filed for bankruptcy cited “medical issues” as the driving cause.
Similarly, it seems deeply unfair that wealth plays a determinative factor in both quality of life and life expectancy. It is a fact that lower-income people are less likely to have access to primary and specialty care and therefore are less likely to receive new drugs and treatments. It is no surprise that this portion of the population lives shorter lives marked by higher instances of chronic illness and mental disease.
Such disparities, particularly among children, cry out for correction. After all, a child born poor is no less deserving of quality medical care than a child born rich.........
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