Federal Health Program Under Fire: ‘Karl Marx Couldn’t Have Come Up With This’

A federal program designed to make Americans “healthy people” is getting broader.

Healthy People 2000—launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to address obesity—initially was supposed to address the differences in health outcomes between wealthy and non-wealthy.

By 2010, the mission was expanded to eliminate, not just reduce, health disparities.

Healthy People 2020 is moving the goalposts yet again—“to achieve health equity, eliminate disparities and improve the health of all groups.”

According to the HHS directive, “Achieving health equity requires valuing everyone equally with focused and ongoing societal efforts to address avoidable inequalities, historical and contemporary injustices, and the elimination of health and health care disparities.”

“Karl Marx couldn’t have come up with this,” says Richard Williams, vice president for policy research at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and a 27-year veteran of the Food and Drug Administration.

They have decided that ‘racism’ is a determinate of health. They are concerned about ‘residential segregation’ and ‘perceptions of discrimination. If you try hard enough, and they have, virtually every aspect of society can be related to health, such as quality of housing.

Among the overarching objectives is “Environmental justice: supporting the rights of all people to live in a healthy environment.”

Critics suggest that manipulating market economics—while expanding the federal bureaucracy—lies at the core of the agenda.

“Now we want to make all the world’s wages better. That’s real mission creep,” Williams said.

Read more on Watchdog.org.