Dr Biden will see you now

It’s good to know that the Leader of the Free World is a polymath, whose interests and erudition extend even into such technical areas as medicine.

However, before punching the air with ebullient joy, we ought to track his foray into such areas to make sure he arrives at a legitimate destination. If he doesn’t, then rejoicing should be replaced with concern.

That, I’m afraid, is the case with Joe Biden’s recent speech on medical care, in which he made some statements that make it hard not to fear for the Free World of which Joe is the Leader.

The president tackled two branches of medicine of personal interest to him: oncology, because his son Beau died of brain cancer; and mental health because… well, you know.

Speaking on the first subject, Joe laudably insisted on reviving the American can-do spirit: “One of the things I’m always asked is, you know, why Americans have sort of lost faith for a while in being able to do big things.”

Such big things, for example, as curing cancer. “Why cancer? Because no one thinks we can, that’s why. And we can. We ended cancer as we know it,” Joe told his stunned audience.

The 19^th century Russian satirist Saltykov-Schedrin once quipped that: “The government’s task is to keep the populace in a state of permanent amazement.” Joe must have taken that prescription to heart.

The people in the audience were duly amazed. The mortality rates of some cancers may be going down, but an average of over 1,600 Americans still die of cancer every day. Their families must feel relieved to know that the Biden administration has expunged that ghastly disease once and for all.

I imagine Biden’s press secretaries have to work their fingers to the bone every time Joe offers one of his staggering insights. In this case, they must have gasped and taken the name of Our Lord in vain, possibly with the addition of obscenities.

Having got that off their chests, they replaced “ended” with “can end” in the version released to the press. But it was too late: video cameras had preserved Joe’s braggadocio for posterity.

Having taken care of oncology, Joe bravely attacked psychiatry. Specifically, he took exception to insurance companies that are reluctant to offer complete coverage for the treatment of mental problems. Joe then promised his administration would end this iniquity the way it had already ended cancer.

“We’re working to improve insurance coverage for mental health in America,” said Biden.

“And folks, you know, I don’t know what the difference between breaking your arm and having a mental breakdown is,” he added. “It’s health – there’s no distinction.”

As an aside, I always admire the mock-folksy tone American politicians feel called upon to adopt. They sound as if speaking not just in public but in a public bar – I’m surprised they don’t interrupt their press conferences to growl at a reporter: “Whatcha lookin’ at, pal?”

Getting back from the form to the substance, there’s one helluva lota distinction between a cracked bone and a cracked psyche, Joe. The former shows up on an X-ray, the latter doesn’t.

Thus diagnosing, or these days even defining, a mental disorder is seldom straightforward. For example, a man grieving for his dead wife may be considered mentally ill, whereas a man claiming to be a woman is seen as a perfectly sane individual exercising his right to identify as anything he wishes.

Conditions that in the past called for a talk with a friend over a couple of stiff drinks have now been medicalised. Lack of self-restraint and responsibility has been upgraded to ‘gambling addiction’ calling for medical interference. And as to the craven refusal to face the very mild symptoms of withdrawal from opiates, no amount of money thrown at it is too big.

Such rampant medicalisation makes mental conditions rather open-ended and therefore extremely expensive to treat. In fact, Americans spend over $200 billion a year on mental problems – more than they spend on heart disease, diabetes and indeed cancer.

Not only does the cost of treating mental conditions exceed any other, but it’s also growing faster – as it’s bound to do when the boundaries of the problem are being pushed wider and wider by the burgeoning weight of psychobabble.

I’m sure insurance companies wouldn’t quibble about covering legitimate psychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia or dual-personality disorder. Yet one can understand their reluctance to shell out every time a self-indulgent housewife complains about being in a lousy mood lately.

Biden has in effect committed his administration to twisting insurers’ arm into going against their commercial interests. Such bossiness is to be expected on the part of any left-wing government, in America or anywhere else.

But insurance companies are still commercial concerns that have to answer to their shareholders. If new regulations force them to expose themselves to inordinate risks, they are bound to transfer their new costs to customers suffering from cancer, heart disease, diabetes and, well, broken bones.

Government expenditure will have to follow suit, which means higher taxes. American consumers of medical services will thus be hit with the double whammy of higher insurance premiums and greater taxation. I’m sure they won’t mind, secure in their serene knowledge that true equality has been achieved between mental and physical disorders.

Their plight saddens me, but not nearly as much as the future of the Free World. After all, Joe Biden, who clearly wasn’t compos mentis even before his first term, is running for a second one. And he may well win.