People really need to stop granting fear-mongering “first step” arguments any credence:

You’d think that doing research to figure out which treatments are most effective would be an obviously good thing. But no: it is, apparently, the first step on the road to socialized medicine. A lot of the attacks rely on this “first step” argument. For instance, the Heritage Foundation wrote that “The type of information collected by CER could eventually be used inappropriately if a “Federal Health Board” was created to decide which types of treatment would be available to whom and when.”

It could be used to do bad things! At least, if a board that doesn’t exist were created and told to use this information! Pass me my smelling salts. I await with eager anticipation the Heritage Foundation’s realization that this very same logic could be used to ban guns: after all, they too can be used to do very bad things, and (unlike comparative effectiveness research) actually are so used. Do you think consistency will oblige Heritage to come out in favor of a ban on all guns? Me neither.

I can’t recall ever coming across a “first step” argument that was in any way compelling. The best response to any of this “first step to socialism”, “first step to fascism” or “first step to socialized medicine” nonsense is “come back to me when you have some evidence or any concrete claims to discuss”.