Malpractice

Chemotherapy is the standard of care for several types of cancer, including leukemia and lymphoma. If you develop leukemia and your doctor prescribes chemotherapy, you can reasonably assume you have a competent doctor.

But suppose you went to that same doctor with a skin rash or a broken arm and, without seeing you, the doctor also prescribed chemotherapy. In that case, you’d probably think the doctor was a quack and seek treatment elsewhere.

Even if the doctor could provide examples where chemotherapy worked well against cancer, common sense dictates that this doesn’t mean chemotherapy is effective for all medical conditions. Fortunately, doctors know this, and there is a saying within the medical profession that “prescription without diagnosis is malpractice.”

But this one-size-fits-all approach to problem-solving does happen within our government. In Congress, there are two ideological camps: one that believes more government is the solution to our problems and another that believes less government is the answer. And like chemotherapy, both camps are right enough of the time to have evidence for why they believe their approach is the correct one. But neither ideological framework is a cure-all, and applying their same prescription to all problems is political malpractice.

For some problems, such as military defense or interstate highway construction, the government is the best solution. On the other hand, challenges like developing innovative software are usually best handled by the private sector. And there are cases, such as urban renewal, where a blend of public and private participation makes the most sense.

So, the question is not if more or less government is better. The question is, what is the exact problem at hand, and what does history tell us is the most effective way to solve it? Not preconceived ideological prescriptions, but what is the best custom treatment plan for the specific challenge we are facing?

Just as we don’t tolerate medical malpractice in healthcare, let’s also stop accepting the political malpractice of ideological governance. We demand evidence-based medicine – let’s also demand evidence-based government.

Yours in republic keeping,
James Carroll
BFPNC Chair