The U.S. government already legally limits the number of hospitals that may purchase expensive CAT scanners and modern radiation therapy units, due to their impact on Medicare costs. These programs and growing public awareness of advances in life extension research require that choices be made between the extension of human life span and the expectations of the electorate for ever more services at tax rates that they can afford. This interventionism in the life extension market should surprise no one, for as Ludwig von Mises pointed out long ago, major bureaucracies are by their nature hostile to the free market. Opposition to a free market in human longevity is merely the latest in a long line of statist attacks on all market freedoms. In order to thwart these attacks, a foremost requirement is for economists to speak out and present the case for the economic benefits of longer lifespans.
Most people still do and it is a tribute to the basic American sense of life and self-improvement.
If he does not have the freedom to pursue the preservation and betterment of his life, then the right to life loses the anchor of reality. This means that the life-extension market must be completely deregulated. It means government must contract, not expand, its control over all fields affecting the right of individuals to make life-extending market choices. Consumers must be free to decide for themselves what medicines, drugs, vitamins, surgical procedures, research, and information will best benefit them-as long as they are willing to pay for them, as all consumers must in a truly free market. Quality control to protect consumers could be better handled by private evaluative groups such as Underwriters Laboratories, Consumer Reports, Standard and Poor's, and many insurance firms now do to assure high quality in various other market areas.