<p class="p1">King Charles and Queen Camilla&#8217;s recent visit ahead of America&#8217;s 250th birthday was a timely reminder of a founding principle Americans often take for granted: that &#8220;our rights come from God, not the state or the King.&#8221;</p>
<p class="p1">In the 18th century, evangelist George Whitefield — who, it is estimated, preached to 80% of American colonists — was expelled from Great Britain for preaching that exact message, which later became foundational to the American founding. And it still sets us apart from our friends in Europe, specifically the U.K.</p>
<p class="p1">The insistence that governments can overrule a person&#8217;s human dignity has caused the deaths of countless patients, including — famously — Charlie Gard. Years ago, Concerned Women for America (CWA) led millions of Americans in prayer as we pleaded with the U.K. government to let Charlie Gard, a severely ill British boy, travel to the United States for treatment.</p>
<p class="p1">Charlie suffered from a rare genetic disorder that caused progressive muscle weakness and brain damage. His parents raised private funds to bring him to the United States for an experimental treatment they hoped might extend his life, but British courts ultimately ruled that doctors could withdraw life support over his parents&#8217; objections.</p>
<p class="p1">Despite prayers and support from people around the world, including then-Pope Francis and President Donald Trump, 11-month-old Charlie passed away after British courts not only denied his parents the ability to pursue experimental treatment in the United States, but actively prevented them from doing so — even after President Trump compassionately offered the use of his own plane for Charlie&#8217;s transport.</p>
<p class="p1">CWA wasn&#8217;t able to save little Charlie&#8217;s life, but we promised his mother that we would work to ensure other children here never meet the same fate. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m speaking out now. I worry that the U.S. could unintentionally import the kind of dystopian rationing that the British government so callously — almost gleefully — employed in Charlie&#8217;s case.</p>
<p class="p1">Rationing medical care is absolutely not federal lawmakers&#8217; intention, of course. Many in Congress rightly want to make medicines more affordable for Americans. We agree. But current proposals to lower U.S. drug prices by tying them to prices set by government-run health systems in other countries would inevitably import the rationing tactics those countries use to achieve such low costs.</p>
<p class="p1">Countries like the United Kingdom and Canada largely rely on a metric called the Quality Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, to decide which medications are worth covering. A better name for QALYs would be &#8220;Life Value Judgments.&#8221; Bureaucrats essentially measure how much a medicine costs for each year of &#8220;perfect health&#8221; it provides to the average patient.</p>
<p class="p1">The problem is that these assessments do not treat everyone equally. Instead, they effectively assume that someone with a disability, chronic condition, or rare disease like Charlie&#8217;s can never experience perfect health. As a result, medicines designed to treat those conditions inherently score poorly on supposedly neutral cost-effectiveness evaluations. Treatments for someone with an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, for instance, will never score as highly and are therefore more likely to be denied.</p>
<p class="p1">Simply put, bureaucrats value some people&#8217;s lives less than others.</p>
<p class="p1">Such a system goes against everything we as Americans believe. In fact, every Republican in Congress has already voted against using rationing in Medicare. Like the first American colonists, we still believe that everyone is equal in the eyes of God — and that a person&#8217;s life or death lies in His hands, not the government&#8217;s.</p>
<p class="p1">Still, despite our moral convictions — and legal protections like the Americans with Disabilities Act — some want to import Life Value Judgment metrics and other policies that undermine the sanctity of life.</p>
<p class="p1">ObamaCare, for example, included a provision creating an Independent Payment Advisory Board — what many Republicans rightly dubbed &#8220;death panels&#8221; — to lower spending by rationing care. Thankfully, Republicans repealed that provision during the first Trump administration before the panel was ever formed.</p>
<p class="p1">On another front, physician-assisted suicide is now legal in 13 states and the District of Columbia.</p>
<p class="p1">If we truly believe in the value of every person, we must fight for all life. We must protect patients and preserve their access to life-saving therapies. That will not happen if lawmakers outsource decisions to foreign bureaucrats. Importing the price controls of governments that ration care risks importing rationing itself.</p>
<p class="p1">Yes, healthcare costs too much. But real reform starts by supporting patients, not bureaucrats. President Trump has made that his mantra. Trump&#8217;s brilliant expansion of Health Savings Accounts and Trump RX puts families — not government — in charge of healthcare dollars. In addition, in 2019, President Trump required hospitals to post real prices rather than hide them behind billing codes. The Biden administration effectively reversed Trump&#8217;s order by slow-walking enforcement, but, again, the president is fighting back on behalf of consumers.</p>
<p class="p1">There is more to be done. For instance, pharmacy benefit managers who profit by driving up drug prices should be reined in and required to pass savings on to patients. And the fastest path to lower drug costs is greater competition from generic and biosimilar medicines. Competition is the key.</p>
<p class="p1">In America, we do not set up government bureaucracies as our kings. We respect human dignity. We trust patients. We reward innovation.</p>
<p class="p1">We need reforms that reflect those values — not price controls from a system that decided little Charlie Gard wasn&#8217;t worth saving.</p>
<p class="p1">***</p>
<p class="p3"><em>Penny Young Nance is CEO and president of Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization, and author of &#8220;7 Rules for Success in Business and Life: A Woman’s Guide.&#8221; <a href="https://concernedwomen.org/"><span class="s1">https://concernedwomen.org/</span></a>. </em></p>

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The Bureaucratic System That Could Set America On A Scary Path To Rationed Healthcare

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The Bureaucratic System That Could Set America On A Scary Path To Rationed Healthcare