The Forgotten Face of Socialized Medicine

Recently, doctors performed a highly innovative face transplant in France. Our leftist media duly noted that the operation was "free".

Dubernard said the cost of the operation hasn't been calculated. It will be paid for by the French government's tax-financed health system.

Interestingly, though, one country that did calculate the cost was China, whose figure, at least $75,000, is probably lower than it would be in the West.

Seeing this, I figured that the left would pick up on this as an example of why the socialized medical sector of France is "superior" to the semisocialist one in America, or, of course, any fully capitalist one. And now, I see, there is a twist: The patient, no longer anonymous, but still wanting privacy, stands to make enormous profits!

Mme Dinoire told Le Parisien newspaper yesterday that she felt very well, but that she had been upset by the media coverage. "I need to live through these moments serenely," she said. "I also want my family to be left out of all this."

Under the deal, which could be worth more than £100,000, Mme Dinoire will keep all the profits from the sale of the photographs and the film after deducting Mr Hughes's costs and the fees of the agency distributing his work.

Wow! The left can now claim both innovation and profitability for patients in the French system. This will be a sure-fire winner in America. After all, there are more patients who vote than physicians, I am sure they will reason, out of context, of course.

Ayn Rand once called the physician the "forgotten man of socialized medicine". Suddenly, "forgotten face" seems more apropos. What advocates of a free enterprise in medicine must stress is that profitability fuels innovation. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the patient selling the pictures if she wishes, it is a crime that others have been forced to bear the cost of her operation through government confiscation of their wealth. Furthermore, it is clear from the fact that the cost was never calculated, that there is no built-in incentive in the French system, such as high fees, for individual physicians to do such groundbreaking work.

The left hope that many patients will want to have it both ways, like the privacy- and profit-loving Mme. Dinoire. But to demand perfection of men who can't profit from their own work is foolhardy.

-- CAV