There’s an amusing WSJ article today which argues that the Court’s “right to privacy” arguments underlying Roe v Wade and Casey also imply that government mandated health care would be unconstitutional. O the irony 🙂
. . . If the government cannot proscribe — or even “unduly burden,” to use another of the Supreme Court’s analytical frameworks — access to abortion, how can it proscribe access to other medical procedures, including transplants, corrective or restorative surgeries, chemotherapy treatments, or a myriad of other health services that individuals may need or desire?
This type of “burden” analysis will be especially problematic for a national health system because, in the health area, proper care often depends upon an individual’s unique physical and even genetic history and characteristics. One size clearly does not fit all, but that is the very essence of governmental regulation — to impose a regularity (if not uniformity) in the application of governmental power and the dispersal of its largess. Taking key decisions away from patient and physician, or otherwise limiting their available choices, will render any new system constitutionally vulnerable. . . .