Simply priceless column: "John Derbyshire's Wonderful Life"

Derbyshire is a writer for National Review Online. He appears to fit in well there.

Thursday, December 21, 2006
John Derbyshire's Wonderful Life

Christmas is a time to think of the neediest. Although I think that the free market is the best philanthropist, every year at this time I make a tax-deductible $20 charitable donation to some worthy cause against my better judgment. I must admit orphans in Darfur just make my eyes glaze over. There are so many of them and they are so far away and I'm afraid anything I do will just prolong their misery. I want to help someone closer to home. But who?

Then I stumbled over this tragic story on The Corner, which brought a tear to my eye. Conservative pundit and humanitarian John Derbyshire received some devastating news this Christmas: "My health insurer has just notified me, in a brief form letter, that my monthly premiums are to rise from $472.33 to $857.00 on January 1st. That's an increase of 81 percent. ***E*I*G*H*T*Y*-*O*N*E* *P*E*R*C*E*N*T*** Can they do that? I called them. They sound pretty confident they can. Ye gods!" This news put quite a damper on the festivities at the National Review Christmas party, where they were singing such Derbyshire-penned conservative carols as "Shi’ites Roasting in a Mosque on Fire."

My heart went out to Derbyshire, who has shown great compassion in the past for those who have had health care problems. When a 24-year-old Guatemalan illegal immigrant fell off a roof and broke his back, Derbyshire wrote, "He is currently in the hospital at Huntington (my home town). Cost of treatment so far: $260,000 - 'not counting fees for the services of more than a dozen physician specialists' and 'with no end in sight.' You have to feel sorry for this young man as a fellow human being. On the other hand, he's darn lucky he fell off a roof in the U.S.A., rather than one in Guatemala. As soon as he can be moved, he should be sent back to the care of his relatives in that country."

John Derbyshire is a fellow human being, too, and although he was born in England, he is here legally, as far as I know (someone might want to check that out). In fact, Derbyshire suffered horribly under the British system of socialized medicine in the care of a drunk, sadistic doctor, who with shaking hands removed Derbyshire's tonsils, adenoids and appendix though luckily left his heart intact. As a youth Derbyshire woke up many a night screaming, "Where's the rest of me?"

(snip)

http://jonswift.blogspot.com/2006/12/john-derbyshires-wonderful-life.html