A point I didn't flesh out too much in my column seems to have struck a chord with a lot of readers nonetheless. Once the government decides it is in charge of health care, it has a say in everything you do (this, natch, was an argument of my book). Guns, diet, and cars are more relevant to our slightly lower life expectancy than insurance premiums and reimbursement rates, so of course Henry Waxman and Barbara Boxer and the rest of the gang are going to use their control over the health-care system as an excuse to go after those aspects of our lives. Why wouldn't they? They already want to influence those aspects of our lives now. Health care is really the only other policy area after "the children" and global warming that gives the State access to the most private spheres of our lives. Whenever someone says "it's a health-care issue" it's somehow supposed to trump traditional rights and liberties. That's what the push in the 1990s to make gun control a health-care issue was all about. That's why cameras once used to catch terrorists are now used to catch people eating in their cars in the U.K.
I've never heard anyone say something is a "health-care issue" as a preface to an argument for getting the government out of something. Anyway from the column (after a bracing discssion of life expectancy stats):
But heres the kicker: The more life expectancy improves, the more we will spend on health care. Despite his professed outrage over charges of death panels and whatnot, Obama admits this. In an interview with the New York Times last spring, he acknowledged that oldsters are a huge driver of cost. The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health-care bill out here, Obama explained. Which is why he advocated an advisory panel of experts to offer guidance on end-of-life care and costs. But dont you dare call it a death panel.
Now, I dont think Soylent Green-style solutions are coming down the pike. (Government cheese is people!) But every nationalized health-care system to one degree or another rations care based on the quality of life and number of life years a procedure will yield. Thats perfectly reasonable. If you put me in charge of everyones health care, I would do that, too. Thats a really good argument for not giving me or anyone else that power.
When it comes to civil liberties, liberals are often distrustful of government power. But, for reasons that baffle me, they are quite comfortable with Uncle Sam getting into the business of deciding, or providing guidance on, which lives are more valuable than others. A government charged with extending life expectancy must meddle not just with our health care, but with what we eat, how we drive, how we live. A government determined to cut costs must meddle not just with how we live, but how we die.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDljOWNmNjQ1NDA1MDRlZGNlMzgyNWE3MmU1MDliNDk=
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"Coincidence is a God scheduled opportunity."
Scott Hamilton
"Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly." --Robert Schuller
