In Nazi Germany, first Jewish doctors were forbidden to care for non-Jewish patients. Then non-Jewish doctors were forbidden to care for Jewish patients. Soon Jews could hardly get health care at all, but it didn’t matter, because where they were going it wouldn’t help. The history of denying medical care is not an honorable one.

So I am dismayed, but not surprised, to report that it has come to America. It is only one step from “We want you to be woke” to “We’ll let you die if you aren’t.” Milford Regional Medical Center in Massachusetts announces that it with withhold care from patients who show hostility to woke ideals by words or even gestures or body language. No “microaggressions” here.

But who decides? I’ll bet it won’t be doctors, who still may retain some shred of Hippocratic ideals. I’ll bet it will be administrators, whose loyalty is to the bottom line. How this squares with laws requiring that all visitors to emergency departments be seen and cared for is not stated. Also not stated is what will decorate the office wall of this decider of life and death. I suggest a portrait of Josef Mengele, MD, PhD, camp physician at Auschwitz.

He, not Hippocrates, is the intellectual and moral ancestor of these barbarians. Look at the kind eyes. Look at the sympathetic expression. Look at your future, unless you stand up on your hind legs and do something about it. Denying care because of politics makes me furiously angry. How about you?