Thursday, May 24, 2018

Look, It's Alive !

As we witness the highly partisan attacks on such institutions as the FBI and EPA, it is easy to overlook some surprising life in our long-dead Zombie Congress.

Last August, the Senate passed "right-to-try" legislation, which permits terminal patients to try unproven drugs.  The House passed it this week, and it goes to the President, who is expected to sign it into law.  I applaud this!

The Republican argument was that individuals should be able to make as many decisions for themselves as possible.  The Democratic argument is that dying individuals make easy targets for unscrupulous drug providers.  Further, the Democrats said a dying person is a useful statistic in medical studies.  That's where the Democrats lost me.  It is one thing to be denied a medical choice because the drug is too expensive, but it is an entirely different thing to be denied because my death might or might not be a useful data point.

Now, if Congress can just do something about the exploding deficit, without sinking into the Keynesian or Supply-side swamps . . .