Healthcare

A noble vision of better healthcare


If you had told me that an absolute page-turner of a novel with a strong pro-market message had been published in 2005; that its theme could not be more topical today as Americans struggle with proposals to nationalise their health care industry; that this novel was heavily endorsed four years ago by Milton Friedman, Walter Williams and Steve Forbes; then (given that I had never heard of it) I would have instantly assumed you were playing some kind of joke on me.

I follow the literature of liberty closely and I include novels, so it was a wonderful surprise and a great joy to discover Noble Vision by Gen LaGreca thanks to John Cerasuolo, an entrepreneur from Tennessee I met when I was speaking recently at the Atlas Experience, a programme of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Thanks John.

If you ever read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand then you will get this book immediately when I tell you it is as if Howard Roark was a surgeon and not an architect. Milton writes that “the defects of government-controlled medicine are dramatized effectively in this page-turning story” and Milton to the day he passed on insisted on reading from cover to cover all books for which he agreed to provide a blurb, so we know he read it. To Steve Forbes it is a “salutary tale” about big government getting even bigger and to Walter Williams it is an intriguing book about unintended consequences of actions by people who might mean well but have a devastating impact down the line. Walter clearly did not enjoy the novel totally as he reports that it “comes too close to describing today’s reality.” Well if it was close in 2005 on publication then it is miles closer today with the looming threat of Obama-Care.

Do pick up a copy and discover how the pioneering surgeon gets trapped by the state bureaucrats now running nationalised health in its maze of rules as he struggles to save the eyesight of a young, highly talented ballerina. As the jacket reads: If he obeys the law, she is doomed; if he defies it, he is.




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