The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine

In Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged this is the explanation given by a distinguished brain surgeon of why he joined John Galt's strike of the men of the mind. This is why, under a current situation very similar to that described in the classic novel, free thinking, innovative, creative, intelligent "men of the mind" may just quit if they are enslaved.

Atlas Shrugged

The Neurosurgeon's Speech

"I quit when medicine was placed under State control, some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. " Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I would not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or the choice of my patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything- except the desires of the doctors. Men only considered the "welfare" of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, only to "serve". That a man who's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust to a job in the stockyards- never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness with which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind- yet what is it that they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it- and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."