Dear editor,
Charlie Gard is the terminally ill 11-month-old in the United Kingdom with a very rare disease whose parents wanted to bring him to the United States for an experimental treatment not allowed in England. To my knowledge, there are only something like 17 cases in the world of this rare disease.
England has had a government-run health care system since every aspect of their society was destroyed during WWII.
Dr. Michio Hirano of Columbia University Medical School [has traveled to London] to assess the infant's condition. But before he could travel to England to accomplish this task, a New York judge had to give him permission.
I thought we, as United States citizens, were free to travel to other countries with which the United States has a reciprocal travel agreement by requiring only a passport. Now, we don't want to vet incoming terrorists but apparently, we vet this outgoing doctor who, of his own free will, wants to help an infant [that] a non-contagious disease infected.
Why would a doctor have to pay a lawyer to represent him in front of another lawyer — who is now an appointed judge filling a court seat — to decide the doctor's ability to travel in this particular situation?
Are you sure our health care system is not already an overly-controlled system of government?
Are you sure you want government with its lawyers controlling our health care system? Are you sure they don't already since lawyers are the prominent profession within our government that write and pass laws that govern "We the People" and, at times, our government-required need for lawyers?
What if Charlie Gard was your child or grandchild whose life is now in the hands of lawyers and not doctors? They’re just more government-required middlemen making their living off what could now be our future lives with their court decision!
STEVEN KING
Milton
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This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Thoughts on Charlie Gard and government-run health care