Health Care Fascism

A number of people, including Peter Ferrara writing in the American Spectator, have raised alarms about the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER), that was included in the Democrats' recent $787 billion boondoggle. Ferrara discusses the peril of central planning of medical decisions:

Is it the private medical community, medical institutes, medical schools, Professors of Medicine, private researchers, etc., informing doctors and their patients, where the ultimate decisions are made? Or is it the government, informing Big Government bureaucracies, who will then impose their decisions on these matters on doctors and patients?

Ferrara also mentions the danger of government bureaucrats who would deny treatment to older patients, as has been done in Britain with its socialist health care system:

Indeed, NICE [British National Institute on Clinical Excellence] is so nice that in 2006, as Betsy McCaughey reports at Bloomberg.com, it "decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye." This was not an isolated policy decision. As McCaughey further reports, NICE "approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit." This leaves senior citizens at a great disadvantage, because they have fewer years left to enjoy the benefits of any medical treatment. As a result, McCaughey continues, "Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis."

Ferrara also gives a number of examples of people in Canada's socialist health care system whose treatment was delayed or denied:

In March of 2005, [Ontario resident Shona] Holmes began losing her vision and experienced headaches, anxiety attacks, extreme fatigue, and weight gain. Despite an MRI scan showing a brain tumor, Ms. Holmes was told she would have to wait months to see a specialist. In June, her vision deteriorating rapidly, Ms. Holmes went to the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, where she found that immediate surgery was required to prevent permanent vision loss and potentially death. Again, the government system in Ontario required more appointments and more tests, along with more wait times. Ms. Holmes returned to the Mayo clinic and paid for her surgery.

All of Ferrara's points are valid. But I think he greatly underestimates the potential hazards of allowing the government to run the health care system.

For one thing, we have seen how ethnic minorities have been given preferences in hiring, promotions, university admissions, and government contracts. If some federal government agency gets to decide who gets what type of medical treatment, we can rest assured that whites will be pushed to the end of the line.

Moreover, government involvement in health care to date has almost always favored women over men. In 2007, the National Cancer Institute spent $551 million on breast cancer research but only $305 million on prostate cancer. Even the US Department of Defense, which has far more male employees than female, spent $138 million on breast cancer research versus only $80 million for prostate cancer in 2008.

If you are a white male, under a government-run health care system you will likely be denied treatment for a medical condition, while some minority or woman who has a similar condition is granted it.

Furthermore, government-run health care would offer a tempting means for those who wish to stifle dissent. Anyone who criticizes the government had better hope they stay healthy. Look at what happened to Joseph Wurzelbacher when he asked 0bama a question that the presidential candidate found awkward. He was investigated by several government oficials in Ohio who were 0bama supporters.