A Modest Proposal to Increase Job Security for Health Care Workers

[Boojatta]

Why not presume that if a person lives near a hospital, then the person has cancer?

1. Cigarette smoking is becoming less common
People who quit smoking or never started are likely to enjoy a lifestyle free of chemotherapy treatment, provided that they live far from hospitals. However, people who live close to hospitals cannot claim that it would be inconvenient to travel a short distance for periodic chemotherapy treatments. Are they ready to pay the wages of health care workers who are no longer receiving an adequate supply of cancerous cigarette smokers? I don't think so. It would be quite easy to reintroduce polio germs into the environment. Could they manage without the help of vaccines developed by government researchers? It's unlikely. If they want to enjoy the health benefits provided by governments, then they should be realistic and accept that life includes not just the pleasant, but also the unpleasant. As a matter of fact, everybody agrees that chemotherapy treatment is unpleasant, so there's nothing controversial about this. Compulsory chemotherapy treatments will definitely help some people. People who believe that they are not being helped should recognize that they are fallible human beings and that they might be wrong. Compulsory chemotherapy treatment might actually be helping them too, regardless of what they think.

2. Nobody is talking about taking away freedom
If you are a qualified health care professional, then you will be free to offer testing services to people who want a second opinion. However, it must be remembered that a second opinion is still just an opinion. Therefore, none of these second opinions can be given official recognition. People who live close to a hospital will be presumed to have cancer, regardless of any testing conducted. There is no significant risk of a government being mistaken about whether or not somebody lives near a hospital. However, medical examination of an individual patient always carries with it a risk of error, so the results of any medical examination of the individual can simply be ignored.