Sowell on Health Care Reform

Or is it Health Control?

What is both dangerous and mindless is rushing a massive new medical-care scheme through Congress so fast that lawmakers do not even have time to read it before voting on it. Legislation that is far less sweeping in its effects can get months of hearings before congressional committees, followed by debates in the Senate and the House of Representatives, with all sorts of people voicing their views in the media and in letters to Congress, while ads from people on both sides of the issue appear in newspapers and on television.

If this new medical scheme is so wonderful, why can’t it stand the light of day or a little time to think about it?

A little time, indeed. Discussion is a good thing. Not to mention actually reading a bill before voting on it. Remember Congressman Price and the stimulus bill?

And what about that care vs. control to which Sowell refers?

Many people do not understand that it is not just a question of whether government bureaucrats will agree to pay for particular medical treatments. The same government-control mindset that decides what should and should not be paid for can also decide that the medical technology or pharmaceutical drugs that they control should not be for sale to those who are willing to pay their own money.

Right now, medications or treatments that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration are medications or treatments that you are not allowed to buy with your own money, no matter how desperate your medical condition, and no matter how many years these medications or treatments may have been used without dire effects in other countries.

The crucial word is not “care” but “control.”