The Doctor and the StatenWhile cooling my preadolescent heels in the familyndoctor’s office forty-odd years ago, I was given tonstudying a Victorian Era print that hung on the waitingnroom wall. The Doctor was its title. A young woman, barenarm flung helplessly toward the viewer, lay stretched onnchairs in, apparently, the family parlor. The tailcoatedndoctor gazed down on her with great concern. Familynmembers hovered nearby. Matters looked grave. “What wasnthe young lady’s affliction? And, equally to the point, whatnwas the likelihood of recovery? The artist offered no hints.nThat was not, of course, the point of the painting.nThe point was, here is medicine. In a moment ofnextremity, patient and healer join in near-spiritual communion.nThere is something of the sacred in it all. Pay?nRemuneration? The doctor had not come for these. Anyway,nthe parties, with nods and murmurs, would afterwardsnarrange matters to their mutual satisfaction. No computersnwould spit out the reckoning, no committee’s review aridnstamp of approval.nThere is a purity about The Doctor that is more beguilingnnow than when it fascinated me in the 50’s — an age morenakin, in spirit, to the 1890’s than the 1990’s. Doctorsnhealed, and monetary matters somehow took care ofnthemselves. This is not to idealize a bygone time whenncholera, tuberculosis, childbirth, and malaria swept awaynthousands whose cure today could be taken more or less forngranted. The problem then was the comparatively primitivencharacter of medicine. The problem today is lack of funds.nWe cannot afford the wondrous hospital rooms, with thenwondrous facilities and wondrous medicines now availablento us.nWilliam Murchison is a columnist for the DallasnMorning News.n18/CHRONICLESnby William MurchisonnnnHealth care in 1992 is the best, most sophisticatednever — and the most expensive, not just ever but anywhere,naccounting for nearly 12 percent of the Gross NationalnProduct. Though inflation in the larger economy seemsnmostly under control, health care costs rise sharply eachnyear. What to do? Again and again one encounters thenfamiliar nostrum: national, centralized health care. Thengovernment would be in charge, paying the piper, callingnthe tune. Hawkers of this sweet-smelling patent medicinenabound in modern America. “The penalties for not developingna national health care policy are severe, and growing,”nsay four health care specialists in a recent book. The Crisisnin Health Care. What is needed, they contend, is “ancoherent federal policy.”nThe Heritage Foundation itself, fountainhead of so manynmarket-oriented policy initiatives in the 1980’s, supports an”compact between the U.S. government and its citizens.”nUnder this compact the government would “devise anmarket-based system” of health care; in return, the citizensnwould accept “mandatory family protection,” the obligationnto buy health insurance or else enroll in a prepaid healthnplan. You may recall “mandatory.” It was for 70 years thenbasis of daily life in the Soviet Union.nNone of this has quite the freshness of morning dew.nCollege debaters of my vintage will recall batting aroundnback in the Kennedy years the topic of national health carenand whether the United States should institute such care.nFor two decades Senator Edward Kennedy has argued “yes,nwe should.”nThe latest Kennedy plan would force employers to eithernoffer health insurance or pay into a government-sponsorednplan called, patriotically, AmeriCare. The new plan wouldnlargely replace Medicaid, the federal health care program fornthe poor. The sponsors project first-year costs of $6 billionn