The following appeared here:
April 6, 2010
Dr. Galt Goes On Strike
By Investor's Business Daily
On Strike: A Florida doctor has told patients who voted for Barack Obama that they should seek care elsewhere. His is a noble one-man fight against the soft tyranny of the federal takeover of the health care sector.
The message taped to the entrance of Dr. Jack Cassell's practice is clear: "If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your health care begin right now, not in four years."
Cassell is not refusing to treat patients, according to an Orlando Sentinel story. In his words, "that would be unethical." He's simply asking those who helped the Democratic leadership inflict its health care overhaul on the country to find another physician because the regime that's been created threatens his ability to do good.
"If they read the sign and turn the other way," he says, "so be it."
The Orlando-area urologist sees a "real problem" in ObamaCare, believes it "fatally compromises my ability or any doctor's ability to uphold the Hippocratic Oath" and "can't believe that more people aren't standing up."
He adds: "I think all the doctors in the United States need to take a stand on this, because pretty soon it's going to be too late."
In return for expressing his opposition to a government gone too far, Cassell has been labeled a racist by the man who represents him in Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson, the apparently daft Democrat who has said Republicans want sick Americans to "die quickly."
Grayson is filing a complaint against his constituent, a scare tactic that tells every doctor who might follow Cassell's lead that he or she will be met by government intimidation.
The point that Grayson and other critics of Cassell are missing - ignorantly or willingly - is that the doctor is peacefully protesting a government that will dictate how he practices medicine.
Cassell seems to understand that unless partisan ambition to turn all health care into a government program is stopped, Washington will eventually treat him and other doctors as vassals of the state.
They will no longer be the owners of their minds and their labor, their years of study and the development of their skills. All those instead will be owned by their masters on the Potomac.
Because Cassell is still taking patients, he's not gone fully Galt. But if he did, he wouldn't be alone: 45% of doctors in our IBD/TIPP poll (a result since duplicated by at least one other poll) said they'd consider leaving their practices if a federal health care takeover passed.
While even a brief doctors' strike might cause some immediate harm, the long-term benefits would be worth the pain if they brought the right kind of change.
