Welcome to the Brave New World

Frank Pastore
Thursday, January 29, 2009

Socialist governments ration healthcare when demand exceeds supply—when there’s simply not enough money or medical resources available to provide health care services to all of the people all of the time. What they end up with is either coverage for all of the people some of the time, or for some of the people all of the time.

This sounds great to lots of people, mostly Democrats, until they think about being one of those whom the government decides is too old or too sick to get the rationed treatment. If the procedure or the treatment is too expensive, or if the state decides there’s a more qualified or more deserving candidate, you’re out of luck. In the name of “what’s good for the people,” you end up not getting what you need to stay healthy—or, in some cases, stay alive.

Often, these systems don’t allow you to buy that procedure or treatment on your own because that would be unfair to those who can’t afford it. “Why only the privileged classes would get quality healthcare, and the poor would go without, why that’s so selfish!”—which, in large part, is the motivation to have socialized medicine in the first place.

Consider that in Canada it’s now illegal for a doctor to provide services outside of the system. Which explains, of course, why you see so many Canadians in America getting healthcare.

All this makes perfect sense, or rather, perfect cents, from a purely rational choice/supply and demand point of view.

Now, let’s go to the next logical step.

Consider this past Sunday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos and had the following exchange:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?

PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those—one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that?

PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.

So, according to the person third in line for the presidency, spending money on contraception is a good economic stimulus because it will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government. After a public outcry, the contraception provision was dropped from the bill that passed the House on Wednesday, but the Speaker’s comments were revealing—and alarming.

The position that she articulated scares me.

It’s like something out of a science fiction movie.

Today, it looks like a very short step for a government leader to say something like this:

Due to the ongoing economic crisis, state and federal governments are now forced to further ration public services because increasing demand continues to outpace diminishing supply. We can’t raise taxes high enough and fast enough on taxpayers to generate enough revenue to adequately increase services.

Therefore, we’re forced to take drastic steps to reduce the aggregate demand from tax spenders—those who pay little or nothing in state and federal taxes. Since children of tax payers are not a significant drag on the economy, we are targeting limiting the number of children of tax spenders.

Beginning immediately, we will institute policies to reduce the number of children born to tax spenders.

Therefore, we will target increased contraception and abortion spending in our urban centers. Public schools will now institute mandatory pregnancy tests and off campus abortion care if necessary. Any woman choosing to become a mother must submit a Parental Candidate Application and receive her federal Parenting License before the state will approve her pregnancy.

Sadly, we’re forced to now ration childbirth along with our other medical and social services.

Thank you, and may God Bless America.

For this week and in this bill, the bill that passed the House did not have cost-cutting reproductive services. Speaker Pelosi was too honest with her intentions and backed off under the bright lights of media scrutiny and public outrage. But, unless we change course, this is where we’re headed.

And you thought Aldous Huxley was writing science fiction. Welcome to the Brave New World.