Would Universal Health Care Wreck Cancer Treatment?
Former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaugheyAmid the partisan cavils against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and within the broader debate over health-care reform, free-market conservatives intone darkly about the evils of socialized medicine. What, precisely, are these evils? Apart from citing some delays experienced abroad in the scheduling of nonemergency surgeries, opponents seldom say. That’s beginning to change, however. In op-ed pieces that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on two consecutive days earlier this month, two conservative commentators—John Stossel of ABC News and Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, and current Hudson Institute fellow and chairman of the Committee To Reduce Infection Deaths—argued that government-funded medicine would eliminate the advantage Americans currently enjoy relative to citizens of other countries when it comes to surviving cancer.
