More Laws, More Meddling in Nevada

Once upon a time, a man could open a grocery store, sell cabbages and bacon to his heart’s content, and let the people decide whether they wanted to buy his goods or subsist solely on jackrabbit stew and moonshine. But that was before the wise and benevolent hand of government invented the great evil of “food deserts”—a term which, by the way, ought to be reserved for a particularly lean spell in a prospector’s camp rather than the natural result of people choosing to live where they please.

The latest legislative scheme, Senate Bill 282, moves that Nevada is too barren of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and that the Department of Health and Human Services must ride to the rescue, purse in hand, to shower certain grocery stores with money. These blessed merchants, in return, will presumably endow the land with an abundance of spinach and oat bran, ensuring that no Nevadan shall ever again have to subsist on the unspeakable horrors of canned chili and gas station burritos and sushi.

Of course, we must not forget that where there is one regulation, there must be another, lest some unfortunate soul escape the clutches of bureaucratic benevolence.

Assembly Bill 161, introduced by Rebecca Edgeworth, declares war upon “bad hospices,” for nothing strikes fear into the heart like the notion of an insufficiently regulated place of dying. The federal government has already placed Nevada in its crosshairs, claiming “hospice fraud, waste, and abuse” as their pretext. Now, state lawmakers have rolled up their sleeves to finish the job, ensuring that no hospice shall operate unless it submits to the full embrace of Medicare and all the splendid oversight that comes with it.

One might believe that with all this lawmaking, Nevada must be on the verge of collapse, clinging to life by a thread, with its citizens either starving for want of a state-sanctioned kumquat or perishing in unapproved hospices. But fear not, for the Legislature stands ready to ensure that every man, woman, and child is nourished, regulated, and ultimately laid to rest under the ever-watchful eye of the state.