The Hospital Bills

"In the old days, we used to celebrate if somebody had a baby, we used to chip in and help him out with the hospital bills, if he happened to be hard-pressed for the moment. Now, if a baby was born, we didn't speak to the parents for weeks. Babies, to us, had become what locusts were to farmers."

That's a quotation that has been haunting me lately. It's from the story of Starnesville, where everybody was responsible for everybody else's expenses, in Atlas Shrugged. I imagine it's based on the author's experiences in post-revolutionary Russia.

I feel like we're seeing some of the same poisonous attitude appear in our discussion of healthcare lately. It's certainly to be expected. In fact, it's only natural.

People are fighting over a limited pie.
And if you miss out, you die.