Medical & Political Treatments, The Free State, Part XXI
The Free State has a special section on the medical staffs composed of "healers" with more dedication to the Committe of Five than to Hippocrates and their medical oaths. These healers have routine access to all citizen's medical records and can cause the subject of their attentions to report for additional medical tests as needed. Subjects with histories of heart attacks or seizures are extremely easy to terminate in ways that guarantee the victim's death certificate will read "died of natural causes." Other "medical problems" can result in heart or kidney failure, and the ever-prevalent "fever of unknown origin" can silence a noisy dissenter forever. The level of medical care has declined in spite of everything that the Free State tries to do about. People die every day in what would have once been considered routine, even risk-free medical procedures. No one can ever accuse the Free State of running death wards or neglecting their separate but unequal segments of society. The resources are spread so that everyone receives free health care. But like everywhere else on the Free State, the "cream" rises to the top.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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