Party of Pain

Republican medical strategy.

John Tierney:

1. Do not give patients medicine to ease their pain.

2. If they are in great pain and near death, do not let them put an end to their misery.

The Republicans have been so determined to become the Pain Party that they've brushed aside their traditional belief in states' rights. The Bush administration wants lawyers in Washington and federal prosecutors with no medical training to tell doctors how to treat patients.

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The doctors who matter are the small number of specialists in pain treatment who prescribe opioids. Ronald Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida, estimates that 17 percent of those doctors were investigated during one year by the D.E.A., and an even greater number of others were investigated by local and state authorities, typically in concert with the drug agency. That means a pain specialist might have a one-in-three chance of being investigated for prescribing opioids.

Small government, states' rights conservatives need not apply for membership to the new Republican Party of Pain. Pandering to the far religious right by attempting to force a narrowly defined code of morality (evangelical Christian one) and completely disregarding conservative-libertarian belief in favor of garnering support for religious zealots, modern Republicans with few exceptions are selling their intellectual souls for cheap political gain. From Frist's attempt to amass Evangelical support with his infamous diagnosis of Terri Schiavo's medical condition via video to conservative attempting to infringe upon states' rights and end assisted-suicide laws passed by Oregon, to conservatives attempting to justify the intrusive and illegal spying on our nation's citizens, small government stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours conservatism has gone to the wayside.