I was blind, and then I saw: a personal testament to the ingenuity of American medicine

I have gone blind twice.

Thanks to the marvels of American medicine, my right eye is again seeing my surroundings in clear, sharp focus - a clearer and sharper focus than I have had since my twenties.

My left eye has just  begun to heal from surgery and is coated with ointments. Even so, I can see nearby objects well. Things a block away are still hazy. Progress is rapid, however, and I am confident that, in a few months, my left eye vision will be very good, if not excellent.

A week ago, I had no useful vision in my left eye.

I write this because power-mad Democrats, together with admirers of crazed, long-dead radicals, are conspiring to take issues of health, vigor, and even life and death, out of the hands of individuals and families and hand them to the state.

If they succeed, by enacting Obamacare, medicine will no longer be a magnet for investment because the returns will depend, not on ingenuity or proven effectiveness, but on the whims, personal interests and corruptions of politicians and bureaucrats.

Who is going to invest in an enterprise controlled by American politicians, who are right now taking the nation itself on the road to ruin?

No one. Investment will go elsewhere, to industries and places that promise better returns. Then, the U.S. government will step into the breach, investing tax proceeds and borrowings in projects deemed worthy by politicians and bureaucrats.

Medical innovation will slow, or stop. Medicine will lose its appeal to the best and brightest. Hospitals will become what they are in many parts of the world - the place you go to to die.

The White House and Democrats in Congress are even willing to gamble America's world leading economy on enacting Obamacare, incurring huge future deficits. If they succeed, medical research of the kind that has produced innovations that have twice restored my sight will be reduced to a happy memory.

I first lost all useful vision to kerataconus, a mysterious bulging of the cornea. Several generations of contact lenses, each with a more radical design than the last, kept me going for decades. In the late 1970s, however, the demands of my increasingly misshaped corneas surpassed the ability of contact lens makers to provide the necessary correction.

I could no longer use contact lenses. Without contacts, I had no useful vision.

In 1978, I had my first corneal transplant, using donated tissue. In 1981, I had the other cornea transplanted. Both transplants have been trouble free. Medical students have examined my eyes and expressed admiration for the handiwork of the surgeons.

Importantly, my restored vision has allowed me to continue my rough and tumble lifestyle without any special regard for my eyes.

In recent years, however, another stealthy attacker gradually turned out my lights.

Cataracts.

I had surgery on my right eye in December, the left eye on March 8.

I can already see better with my right eye, without contact lenses, than I could for 40 years with contacts. The healing process, and the improvement in vision, is expected to continue for another month.

While the final result for my left eye remains to be seen, I can already see much better than I could before.

How could that happen?

It happened because medical research has produced another marvel. The implantable lens that Dr. Samir Shah installed to replace the clouded natural lens has corrective power. It now does the work inside the eye that the contact lens used to do on the outside.

In fact, it does it better because the implantable lens does not have to be cleaned, and it doesn't get displaced.

Why would anyone suggest that a medical system that regularly creates new marvels, such as implantable lenses, be replaced by a government-run system?

Because government-run health care hands enormous power - including the power to decide who will live and who will die - to politicians. Indeed, it was Vladimir Lenin, a leading architect of Russian communism, who observed, "Medicine is the keystone of the socialist arch."

Now, Russian communism has given way to a mixed economic system, but Russia has not recovered from the ravages of communist rule and socialized medicine. The average age at death for Russian men is 59.