Government Must Not Assign Scarce COVID Therapies By Race

Walter OlsonI ’ve got a piece inThe Dispatch this morning. Excerpt:Governments around the country have been directing medical providers to allocate potentially lifesaving COVID therapies among patients on the basis of race, a policy that is almost certainly unconstitutional as well as morally open to question. …For those late to this controversy, here ’s a few examples of how the preferences work. In dispensing the scarce kind of monoclonal antibody that is known to retain broad effectiveness against COVID, for example, the Minnesota Department of Healthprescribed a point system in which BIPOC [black, indigenous, person of color] status was worth 2 points, the same as diabetes or age greater than 65.New York state adopted a similar policy of racial discrimination in making available the breakthrough antiviral Paxlovid: access to the drug would depend on having some risk factor for severe illness, but nonwhite status would count as such by itself, whereas white patients would have to demonstrate some extra factor putting them at risk. A Utah state framework for dispensing monoclonal antibodies “gives ‘non‐​white race or Hispanic/​Latinx identity two points, more than hypertension or chronic pulmonary disease,”reports Aaron Sibarium of theWashington Free Beacon, who hasbroken several stories on the issue. Further, the federal Food and Drug Administration has also issued influential guidance promoting racial preferences. …I ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs