Cato adjunct scholar Charles Silver poses that question in the title of a guest post at John Mandrola’s and Adam Cifu’s Sensible Medicine Substack.
Cifu, a professor of medicine and general internist at the University of Chicago, praises Silver’s essay:
This is the sort of essay I love. I had no idea what to expect. I wanted to object to nearly every sentence until the following sentence made me reconsider my objections. I’m still not sure my opinions have changed, but I am certainly better for having read this.
Silver writes:
Across the country, policymakers, scientists, health professionals, and advocates are calling to remove politics from vaccine policy, to promote evidence-based health policy, and to remove [RFK Jr.] as health secretary.
Yet, as far as I have been able to discover, the widespread desire to “remove politics” from health care policy has not led a single mainstream commentator to call for downsizing the government’s role.…
What I fail to understand is why mainstream commentators expect better. To me, the doctors and academics who support the ACA, Medicare For All, the public option, and other government-centric policies seem to be as ignorant of politics as Trump & Co. are of medicine.