What Lit the Flame?
Last night, I happened upon a 1959 Mike Wallace interview. In this interview, Wallace was speaking to Ayn Rand, the goddess of today’s Libertarian Party, the party that Ron Paul would belong to if he had any courage. But Paul has no courage. Paul won’t change from a sinking Republican Party to the Libertarian Party because he knows he’d have even less of a chance of being elected. He won’t bring his millions, and he does have millions, over to the Libertarian Party and run as a Libertarian because he knows he has to keep one foot in the corporate door in order to have any chance of winning at all.
What was the other motivator for what may be a long article about society?
A Personal Experience With Wasteful Bureaucracy
I apologize that I use a personal experience to make my point, but what experiences are we more familiar with than those we’ve personally experienced. We really have no better points of reference.
I moved from Connecticut to California in the fateful year 2001. My right knee started bothering me when I arrived in California and, by November of 2002, the pain was so bad and the x-rays showed such a deterioration that my orthopedic doctor suggested a knee replacement. I received a knee replacement in 2002.
At that time, the surgeon couldn’t promise me how long the knee would last. He was very honest. He said that they’ve gotten better and some people have lived the rest of their lives with a prosthetic knee. Of course, many of those people were well into their 70s and some 80s. At the time, I was 42.
The doctor told me that he expects the knee to last at least 15 years – but, of course, he didn’t promise.
Between 2001 and the present, my back began to give me trouble. In fact, the pain has become unbearable and I’m taking heavy doses of very strong pain medication. The medication is hardly touching the pain.
I went to one doctor who said surgery should be the very last road that I should take in order to fix the problem. At that time the back had just started to bother me and I let it go for a while.
However, the pain increased significantly and my orthopedic doctor suggested that I see a pain management group.
I had some x-rays taken and took them with me to the pain management doctor.
Note that every time I saw a different doctor, I first had to see my primary care physician in order to get a reference. I’d go to my pcp and he would say, “Hello. So what can I do for you today?”
I’d tell him and he said, “Oh, you need a referral? No problem.”
I paid my copay and got a permission slip to see the orthopedic surgeon and the pain management doctor. I could not see any of those doctors without first having to pay my pcp for a permission slip.
I brought the x-rays to the pain management doctor who looked at them and said, “You’re in trouble, dude.”
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