Alas, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ leadership has found yet another left-wing cause into which to divert our membership dues — Marian Wright Edelman’s
“Stand for Children” march on Washington. Mrs. Edelman is one of the chief architects of our modern welfare state, and now she is calling for more of the same.

President Clinton’s second term has so far lacked vision and a clear direction. This is quite disheartening when you remember that only four years ago he promised Americans a bigger government and a nationalized medical care system. His vision was something modern liberals could rally around. Under his plan, a substantial portion of our nation’s economy would have been placed under governmental control.

“Grandfather, you were there in the 20th century when the medical profession still rendered the best medical care in the world to patients in a private patient-doctor relationship. How did all that fall by the wayside?”

Most physicians feel they are being over regulated. There are far too many government programs telling them how to provide patient care, and when the government isn’t interfering with their practice, the administrator of some HMO is on the physician’s back. All of this, of course, under the guise of keeping health care costs under control. I know this because, as Chief Public Health Officer, I wrote and enforced those regulations for over 22 years. In addition, I administered a Medicaid program and was the ever-diligent administrator of an HMO.

Governmental interference in the American medical marketplace (manifested by entities such as price and fee controls, mandates of coverage for insurance, mandated offering of managed care entities without simultaneous mandate for the offering of freedom-based insurance mechanisms, to name a few) has distorted the marketplace, raised overall costs, and lessened quality.

Since President Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency in 1968 to investigate pollution, the agency has become large, bureaucratic, and abusive, and now has the power to control the life and property of every citizen. As the author notes, “Today, there is not a man, woman or child in America whose life is not in danger of being destroyed by some government agency that has declared an action of theirs to be in violation of some regulation.”(1)