Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Because I’m under-employed I find time to go into closed Facebook groups on politics. There, I “debate” philosophy with the sort of people motivated to join closed, partisan-political Facebook groups; because I’m stupid.
While sifting through endless posts about Michelle being more First-Lady-like than Melania, or about Trump being fatter than Obama, or about other totally unimportant shit, I occasionally try to strike up a chat where we try to imagine how we could easily avoid all such nonsense by not having a government.
Naturally, this brings a chorus of invitations to move to Somalia, to forfeit the Socialist (in)Security I’ve already paid for, to stay off the roads I’ve already bought and to never ever call the emergency services whose salaries I already pay. The last is seeming like a good suggestion, however, after learning of what happened to Ronald Newberry of Cleveland on January 14 after he was shot 16 times while trying to back out of his own driveway. Getting shot a bunch of times in Cleveland isn’t that remarkable. What happened next, however, requires some remarking upon.
“He managed to drive about a quarter of a mile down the street before stopping and ended up just outside Cleveland’s city limits, in the suburb of Euclid, Ohio.
Police found Newberry and gave CPR while they waited for an ambulance — which never came,” reads a portion of Doug Criss and Chuck Johnston’s piece for CNN.
It gets worse as body cams pick up the audio of the officers’ haggling.
“‘Our EMS won’t come’, says one of the Cleveland officers in the video. ‘They won’t come because it’s in your city. Even though it’s our victim, they won’t come.’
All the while, Newberry pleads with the officers for help.
‘Please take me to the hospital,’ he says in the video. ‘Please, I’m getting light-headed. I can’t breathe.’
The officers, from the Cleveland and Euclid police departments, then put the man in the back of a Cleveland officer’s patrol car and took him to Euclid Hospital, a two-minute ride away.”
Know what wouldn’t have happened if emergency services were privatized? This. The absurd treatment of Mr. Newberry is the sort of nonsense that can only happen with government. Government is concerned mostly about itself, and it just wasn’t within the interest of Cleveland’s government to help one of its residents who drove the wrong direction after being shot more than a dozen times.
Leftists love to cry that profit motives and the healthcare industry can’t ever work together. This case, like many others, puts the lie to that assertion. In the absence of the ostensibly useless Cleveland Fire and Rescue, there would be private ambulance companies competing for “fares.” Think a private, for-profit ambulance company is going to turn down a payday for two minutes of work?
I know, to the liberals the idea of a profit motive being involved in life-saving services just messes with their chakras or whatever; it’s just unseemly to bring in filthy lucre where lives need saving. I’d argue it’s a helluvalot more unseemly to let someone risk exsanguinating while government employees dicker over jurisdiction.
This case, rather macabrely, gets to the heart of the difference between private companies and government agencies. To a private company, another customer means more profit. To a government agency, another “customer” or “gunshot victim” simply means more work – they get paid the same either way. The effect this has on human motivations can be easily seen in the way the government agents, police and EMS, handled being asked to do their jobs.
The good news is that despite the injuries and utter governmental malfeasance, Mr. Newberry survived the ordeal and is recovering from his wounds. And, there is an “internal investigation” into the incident. Which means the government is investigating itself. We’ve seen this movie before, so, spoiler alert: it’s going to turn out that the cops, EMS and dispatch all acted appropriately.
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