A Novel Idea

Concerns about healthcare reform prompted me to think of a premise for a novel: Healthcare for all eventually comes to mean limiting access to healthcare. At first, expensive cases such as my own are eliminated. Dialysis for anyone over 50, let's say, is no longer covered. Further limiting of access might prevent anyone over 60 receiving cancer treatments or heart bypass surgery. Slowly but surely, the weak, the sick, and the old would be phased out. But this is just the backdrop for the novel. The interesting question is: What kind of world would this create?

Through observing the world and its occupants, I am of the opinion that the weak, the sick, and the old serve a great purpose. They sometimes, but surely not always, provide the following lessons: Smile in the face of adversity. Be thankful for all that you have. Accept yourself as you are, with your supposed blemishes and shortcomings. Learn from the challenges that you face that others do not. Realize how precious each day, each second of life is. See the beauty that surrounds you in every moment. Apprehend the sense of the beyond that comes through suffering. These are a few of the deep lessons that illness and pain and the isolation and loneliness that they so often engender can bring to a person, if he or she is open. And sometimes, though most certainly not frequently, those who observe the weak, the sick, and the old are themselves aware of these lessons on a conscious level and so they allow true compassion to come forth.

In this novel, these learning and loving opportunities are no longer there. Consequently, those who are left, the supposedly strong, healthy, and young, undergo a moral degradation. They become more selfish, self-centered, petty, self-absorbed, then heartless, hurtful, and eventually self-destructive. All too late, those in charge, the ruling elite, the bureaucrats, the corporate masters, realize that through the elimination of those who were deemed unnecessary, they have destroyed something essential in society. Contrary to conventional eugenics, culling the herd of its so-called weaker members did not make the herd stronger.