The medical apparatus of a health system of a society is a drain upon the resources of a society, no matter what the political structure. Repair and maintenance is not free for humans any more than for vehicles. Individual altruistic medics may choose to give their services free of charge, but their resources of food and clothing and equipment has to come from somewhere. There is no such thing as a free consultation. Before the intervention of any form of medical expertise, individuals died when any one of their biological control systems experienced an instability beyond what it was capable of correcting for. Small cuts bled and healed, severed arms or legs or heads were usually fatal. Low levels of toxicity were dealt with by the biochemistry, but large doses were poisonous and terminal. In pragmatic terms, a living healthy individual was a positive asset to the community group, and a dead individual was not an ongoing cost. With the advent of medical technological intervention, what might have previously been a fatal happening or affliction is compensated for, and the individual can be sustained at social expense in a form of borrowed life. The individual only remains alive by using up some of the assets of the society. If their ability to contribute positively to the state is less than what they receive from the state, then the state is being drained of resources. A vigorous state might generate sufficient surplus to sustain a moderate proportion of its individuals in a condition of mortgaged living, but as technological ingenuity continues to be available, such a situation will eventually be unsustainable. Neither life nor cars were ever sacred in the sense of having immortal existence. Neither nature nor the motor vehicle industry ever intended individual entities to be perpetuated after their use-by date.

For most humans most of the time, apart from the animal promptings for food, sleep, excretion and sex, there is no awareness as to the purpose or condition of the majority of the organs and control systems in their body. In the absence of discomfort or visible abnormality, the body is a mysterious background presence which sustains existence. Consequently, relative to the abysmal ignorance of a patient, anyone who takes the trouble to speculate about the operation and purpose of any of the diverse anatomical parts, will feel qualified to propose remedies for any malfunction. Medicine is the domain of those who promote themselves as being able to provide options to the unenlightened afflicted, however unsubstantiated the merits of the proposed treatment happen to be. The cynical exploiters of unproven health treatments take just as much money from the affluent as do the providers of genuinely beneficial technology.

From the time when certain men and women gave up collecting their own food, and promoting themselves as being able to minister to injuries and afflictions, the entire medical repetoire has never been fully available to everyone. Largesse towards the supposed medic has always been the expected means of acquiring their most powerful drugs and advanced skills. Egalitarian attempts, to provide a health system available equally to all, only survive the initial flush of altruistic idealism.