The Swine Flu and Public Policy

We all know that the current administration hates to waste a crisis. Time and again different members of President Obama’s cabinet have gone on record stating that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste because it allows legislation and policies to be implemented that otherwise would not stand up to careful, public scrutiny. We have seen how they exploited fears over our financial institutions and auto manufacturers to facilitate nationalization of those two industries all the while stoking the fires of public hysteria by claiming that those institutions were “too big to fail”. This template has proven effective for them and I find myself wondering, “What next?”

Indeed, what next? I believe that our president and his handlers will fan the fires of public fear using their lackeys in the network news media to exploit the current swine flu scare to push for nationalization of our health care system. After all, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Following the established template, the current administration will correctly conclude that a flu epidemic is a threat to the national welfare, however they will come to the erroneous conclusion that our current system is ill equipped to deal with a flu epidemic and a comprehensive, nationalized health care system is the only answer to the problem. This ignores the fact that there are already contingency plans in place at the CDC for dealing with a virulent public health threat and that our PRIVATE health care system is clearly superior to the nationalized health care systems used by Canada and Mexico. In fact, I suspect that the reason the mortality rate for this flu in Mexico is so high is due to their inferior health care system.

I urge you all the be highly critical of a solution this administration offers for the flu; especially if that solution is radically different from normal policy or if that solution entails radically expanding the Federal Government’s power over our personal lives. Few things are more personal than your own health care. We should all be highly suspicious of any program or policy that will involve more people in those very private decisions especially if the people being brought in are bureaucrats.