Losing One's Humanity

In 2000, I was one of fifteen people in America who saw Pay It Forward, featuring the precocious Haley Joel Osment and underrated actor Bon Jovi, before it was released to video. Sure, the movie was awful, but it had two bright spots: 1) another home-run performance by Bon; and 2) this simple yet profound message that almost moved 16-year-old me to tears – if we sacrifice to show kindness to strangers we can make the world a better place.

But I need not dwell on Pay It Forward, because we all know the power of kindness, sacrifice, and charity from our own lives. When someone shows us sacrificial kindness of their own volition, we are humbled and grateful, for we did nothing to deserve the gift. Likewise, when we take the opportunity to help others in need, we often benefit even more than the people we serve. Such voluntary, sacrificial acts not only meet real physical or financial needs, but build bonds between strangers and increase goodwill in society. This exchange is one of the most beautiful aspects of humanity and largely responsible for what makes us human.

However, the power and beauty of service lies not in the act or gift itself, but in its voluntary nature. Serving at a soup kitchen because one chooses to do so makes him feel good about the way he spent his time. Serving at a soup kitchen because a teacher or boss forces him to feels like drudgery. When the same act is performed through coercion rather than compassion, it robs everyone of the joy of service. The Haves often become bitter. The Havenots become entitled. And this is one of the truly destructive elements of modern liberalism. The obligation to do good actually undermines the good itself.

I'm a resident at a county hospital. We treat patients who don't have insurance. In other words, we take money from the producers in society and give it to the non-producers. You would assume that our patients would not feel entitled to this health care considering they did nothing to deserve it, along with the fact that it comes with such a significant financial burden to society. But you would be wrong.

Liberalism has taught the non-producers that they have a "right" to free health care, that they should ignore their human nature which tells them that they did nothing to deserve this gift. And in this sense, liberalism has robbed these people of their humanity. Similarly, liberalism has stolen from the taxpayer the sense of joy that one experiences when he gets to personally help his fellow man. Liberalism corrupted the gift of health care when it became an entitlement doled out by the government.

While working in the ER a while back, I had a patient who was a prisoner and a most unpleasant fellow. His complaint when he came into the emergency department was "chest pain". So I ordered cardiac biomarkers, basic lab tests that we check to rule out damage to the heart. His biomarkers came back mildly elevated, meaning his heart muscle had sustained some damage. So I gave him some aspirin and called the cardiologist.

The cardiologist assessed the patient and decided to admit him to the hospital for a full work-up the following day. The hospital was busy, and a bed wasn't going to open up for a few hours, so the patient was forced to wait longer in the emergency department before going upstairs. He was furious. He yelled at me while I was seeing another patient, demanding that I address his needs.

"What's the problem?" I asked.

"Why am I not upstairs yet?" the prisoner shouted.

"Because a bed isn't available. But you're just going to lay in bed upstairs, the same thing you're doing now. Try not to worry about it."

"No! I’ve been waiting all day. I want to go upstairs now!"

"Well, again, that's impossible. Rest assured, you're getting all the necessary treatment you need at this time." I was frustrated. The ER was busy, and I had work to do.

"Well in that case, I'm leaving!" he shouted.

"Fine," I said, almost joyfully. "I'll get the paperwork that says you're leaving against medical advice," and I walked away. I'm told I was wrong to respond this way, because this was the type of patient who could have potentially died had he not been admitted to the hospital.

Fortunately for the patient, there was a police officer who had been observing the situation and wasn't very impressed with my bedside manner. He walked straight over to my attending physician and told her that I had mistreated the patient. So my attending smoothed things over with the patient and convinced him to stay in the hospital. It was a big save for America, let me tell you. You can pat us on the back for the future crimes this guy commits.

This prisoner was a typical demanding patient with a sense of entitlement. At some point during his life, he had lost that part of his human nature that would have made him feel appreciative for receiving a free million-dollar medical work-up. And when people lose these traits that make them human, they appear decidedly less human to me. I was instructed later that I should've shown compassion towards this human being. But even when I squinted, I couldn't make out a human being from the life-form that was yelling at me from the hospital bed that day.

I saw another patient later that week who displayed a stark difference in demeanor. She was a twenty-five year old female who had twisted her ankle. Her ankle was swollen, but her x-rays were negative. So I put her in a boot, gave her some pain medication, and told her that she was fine and was going to be discharged. Following our conversation, she looked down at the floor and said softly, "I lost my job last year and don't have insurance. I'm so sorry."

It was the first time I had ever heard a patient say anything like that, and I was quite moved by it. "Are you kidding?" I said. "Nobody here has insurance. We don't care." I wasn't being intentionally kind when I said it. I was simply reacting to her comment. Yet the patient went out of her way to fill out a card, praising me for my compassion. This patient is the anomaly where I work.

Here's the truth about medicine that no politician will tell you unless he wanted to commit political suicide: medicine has reversed the evolution of man. Only the strong survive when it comes to every species on Earth, except for us. Humans are so impressively evolved that we are the only species who have found a way to keep the non-productive members of society from dying, and we even encourage them to propagate at a rate that far exceeds that of society's producers.

When my future wife and I decide to have kids, we will pay thousands of dollars in medical fees. Yet the taxpayers are actually paying uninsured women to have kids. And I'm not talking just one or two kids, but these women may have fifteen kids, and they usually start reproducing in their early teenage years. The non-producers are growing at an alarming rate, and the producers can't afford the cost. And these children grow up in families where they are taught that the government will provide for them, that the government will be their fathers. Liberalism will convince them that they are entitled to these free gifts. In an unintended act of cruelty, liberalism robs these children of their humanity the very day they are born.

Every ER shift I work, I see a drug addict who fabricates an injury in order to get high on pain medication. It costs the county a minimum of $1000 each time they walk into the ER. "Poor people" will often come to the ER for minor complaints, and I usually make a point of asking them, "What's your emergency today?" as a veiled attempt to bring awareness to the fact that they are abusing the ER and the taxpayers. And when I say "poor people", I mean people who on occasion actually make a paycheck, but decided to spend their money on iPhones, a designer purse, or a car much nicer than mine, rather than health insurance for their families. But they come to the ER with these silly complaints because it's a free service to them. And unfortunately, these people are not in the minority of patients I see in the emergency room. But, of course, this is to be expected from a society in which people are told that health care is a "right"-- which stands as one of the most absurd concepts that one can believe. Health care for the uninsured is not a "right". It is a gift and should be respected as such.

Further, every night in the trauma hall we treat drunk drivers, stab wounds, and gunshot victims. It costs $12,000 just to activate a Level 1 trauma (and that's before any procedures or surgery costs are applied). A while back, we saved a patient who was shot ten times with an uzi in a gang fight. And I can make a safe assumption that he didn't turn over a new morality leaf when he was discharged from the hospital a couple weeks later.

The producers spend billions of dollars every year to treat the non-producers who are smoking themselves into pulmonary disease or lung cancer, drinking themselves into liver failure, eating themselves into heart failure or diabetes, sexing themselves into AIDS, and cocaine addicts who are treated for heart failure and then come to the hospital again the next week because they snorted another line. Now, if you have insurance and can pay for the consequences of these decisions, then I have no issues with you. The people with whom I take issue are those who jump off the same cliff every day and then demand a free safety net every time they fall. But why shouldn't they? Liberalism has taught them that they are entitled to it. Liberalism deprives them of that aspect of human nature that says they should feel grateful and humbled by such a gift. Hence, they repeatedly disrespect it.

Though it may seem counterintuitive, allowing these people to live in such a destructive manner with this sense of entitlement is actually not compassionate at all. Rather, it's inhumane and self-perpetuating. Imagine, for a moment, if the government made the decision to give free health care only to the uninsured citizens who weren't personally responsible for their illnesses. What if the free safety net was no longer available to the self-destructive freeloaders? In other words, if you put a gun to your own head and pull the trigger, you would need medical insurance to stop the bullet because you have no right to use someone else's wallet as a shield. Imagine the turnaround this country would make if we actually asked our citizens to take responsibility for their actions. We must stop enabling the self-destructive freeloaders, especially when the societal costs are this severe. One might argue that it would be immoral to withhold medical treatment from these people, but I would contend that the greater immorality is spending money we don't have, especially when it's someone else's.

If a liberal were reading this, he would feel morally superior to me right now and would undoubtedly act outraged. But the truth is that I got into this profession to help the downtrodden and the sick, to help the people who couldn't help themselves. And I have the greatest job in the world because on occasion I get to do just that. But there is a difference between the downtrodden and the freeloaders, and liberals can't seem to distinguish the two. It is the freeloader who is destroying this great country, and it is the liberal who created him. And the liberal stands behind his pulpit every day, pounding his fist, and preaching the same self-righteous sermon. He puts on this charade to champion a cause for which, more often than not, he does not personally contribute financially or sacrificially in any way. Meanwhile, he bullies others into thinking they are subhuman for disagreeing with him. And the greatest tragedy is that far too seldom does the conservative fight back and educate the liberal that, in actuality, it is the liberal who is the inhumane one.

Though one might find my opinions extreme, I hear the majority of my colleagues share similar sentiments every day. I have a friend in my residency who specifically selected this emergency medicine program because he wanted to provide care for the indigent. But since working here, he has been able to see firsthand what happens in an entitlement society. It has robbed my friend of the joy that comes with service, and his new life-plan is to “graduate residency and make as much money as possible.” Even liberals become disillusioned by liberalism when they are the ones on the front-lines witnessing the destructive results for themselves. As such, liberalism not only robs the entitled of their humanity, but in a sense, it de-humanizes those who pay the taxes and provide the aid directly.

A few years ago, I went on a medical mission trip to Mexico. I was overwhelmed with how grateful our patients were for the care that we provided. Likewise, those of us who were providing the care experienced a joy that can only come with a voluntary act of service to people who don’t feel entitled to it. It was a joy that is rarely encountered in the United States county hospital setting.

When I was in medical school, a fellow student emailed the class and recommended we all vote for Obama. He said that Obama would pay for our medical school student loans. I cringed as I was reading the email, and it saddened me to realize that liberalism is even attractive to society's most educated people. Liberals promise a world without consequences, a world without the need for personal responsibility. They promise a world of "hope". And they promise all of this in return for a single vote. But what they fail to tell you is that the cost to you will be cruel-- you will lose the very thing that makes you human.

the stories have been altered to protect patient identity