If, under Obamacare, the federal government allocates health-care expenditures on a utilitarian basis — i.e., on a cost/benefit analysis driven in part by the life expectancy of the patient — then certain groups could be affected more than others. Obviously, the elderly who’ve shown up at town-hall meetings have concluded that they will suffer the biggest impact.

But studies also show that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans often have lower projected survival rates than whites and Asians for various diseases. Accordingly, it’s possible that under Obamacare patients from the former three groups would be denied the more expensive (but only marginally more effective) treatments granted patients in the latter two groups.

This wouldn’t be [intentional] disparate treatment; rather, there may be a disparate impact on blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans based on survivability rates. Since, e.g., blacks (for numerous reasons, including finances, diet/lifestyle, seeking initial treatment much later than whites, etc.) are more likely to die within five years of certain cancer diagnoses than are whites, there may be a greater probability that the more expensive interventions will be withheld from blacks in the aggregate.

Typically, the Left is alert to any possibility, however remote, that a governmental policy or piece of legislation may have a disparate impact on protected classes (“Administration Fails to Act on Asteroid Threat: Minorities and Women Hardest Hit”). Yet thus far there’s been absolutely no discussion of whether rationing may have a disparate impact on certain minority groups. Does anyone doubt that such discussion would be loud and vigorous if, say, Newt Gingrich were the primary sponsor of the health-care bill?