MiG Pilot: the Final Escape of Lt. Belenko

Partly consciously, partly unconsciously, Belenko determined to explore the United States through Soviet eyes, to assess it according to all he had been taught in the Soviet Union. Though already persuaded that much of what he had been told was false, he thought that the Dark Forces had exposed him only to the best and that he should first examine the worst. The worst in the Soviet Union, outside a concentration camp, was a farm, so he announced that he wished to work for a while on a farm.

Fine, said the CIA. It would try to help him obtain a job as a farmhand. First, though, he must undergo a complete physical examination; then he should spend a month or so in a quiet university environment improving his English and learning more about how to navigate socially on his own.

For the physical, Belenko flew with Gregg to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. Having been looked at by a physician almost every day of his life as a Soviet pilot and thoroughly examined every six months, he considered the venture pointless and boring.

He was shocked when an Air Force dentist informed him that five teeth recessed in his gums would have to be extracted and seven others filled or capped. Remembering the agony of having had a tooth pulled in Rubtsovsk, he argued vehemently that no such necessity could exist; else the many dentists who had inspected his mouth over the years would have recognized it. The dentist displayed X rays, pointed out the troublesome teeth, and projected the decay and infection that would ensue unless they were removed. An anesthetic induced euphoria, then unconsciousness, and Belenko was bothered for only a couple of days of tolerable soreness.

The painlessness of the procedure, the detection of his atrocious dental condition, the thoroughness with which he was examined, and the immaculate hospital impressed him. Here is a big chance. It's obvious they're good doctors. They should know. Probably they're good men and will tell the truth. Go ahead. Ask them.

No Party defamation of the United States had affected Belenko more than the Soviet descriptions of American medical care. He still believed that medical treatment in the United States was so expensive that unless one was rich or privileged, serious illness or accident meant financial ruin, irreversible impoverishment. The specter of untold numbers of American workers and their families suffering, maybe even dying, because they feared the catastrophic costs of visiting a physician or hospital proved in his mind that at least in one important respect capitalism was inferior to communism, which provided free medical care. He knew, of course, that Soviet medical care often was inadequate and distributed unequally. How else to account for the flourishing medical black market? If one wanted to ensure oneself or a loved one a first-class appendectomy performed under sanitary conditions by a skilled surgeon at night in his office, one made a deal with the doctor. (In 1976 the going rate for a black market appendectomy was 100 rubles.) Still, if one waited and took his chances, medical care was free, just as his dental care had been.

So Belenko put the military doctors through a polite inquisition. Is this a typical American hospital? How much does it cost to stay in a hospital? To pay a doctor? How can a worker afford it? How can someone very old or poor afford it? How much does a doctor earn? A nurse? How long do you have to wait to see a doctor? To get into a hospital?

The physicians enhanced their credibility to Belenko by prefacing their answers with some qualifications. Medical care in the United States way expensive and becoming more so. The rising costs, the causes of which were many, concerned everybody. A disadvantaged minority of Americans probably did not receive care that was adequate by American standards, but the reasons often were sociological and cultural rather than medical or economic. And there were exceptions to the best generalizations they could offer. Then they answered his questions, and their answers flabbergasted him.

What! You mean they pay a doctor twice as much as a fighter pilot? You mean you pick your own doctor, and if he makes you wait too long or you don't like the way he treats you, you go to another doctor? That means he has to try to treat all his patients well, or they'll go somewhere else. And you can sue a doctor or the hospital if they do something wrong.

Wait a minute. Nobody ever told me the government pays for the old and the poor. And nobody ever told me about this insurance. Nobody ever said anything about insurance paying most of the bills. They lied. All these years, they lied, and they knew they were lying!