ROGER SIMON: Socialized Medicine in the Shadow of Wuhan.

My last argument against socialized medicine is that it is, ironically, much more hierarchical than ours. Despite what Michael Moore might tell you in his thoroughly-dishonest film about Cuban healthcare, socialist countries are the last place you would want to be if sick—that is if you’re not a member of the politburo or at least the nomenklatura.

I was in the Soviet Union twice on cultural exchanges in the late eighties, about the same time as Bernie Sanders’ honeymoon in the same country. (I don’t think we really visited the same place.) Because I was with a group of screenwriters, I was taken to Scriptwriter 1 and 2, two relatively nondescript high-rises inhabited entirely by writers whose work was approved by the state.

Several of them told me they didn’t really wish to live there—too many writers and little contact with the people they were writing about and for. Also, they felt watched. So I asked why they stayed. It was, they told me unanimously, the only building in Moscow with a decent clinic.

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