Socialized medicine can be painful.

According to this news report from England, literally:

Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections

Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.

The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic" injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

What I think is beyond stupid is the increasingly common pattern of legislators voting for legislation they have not read. While I'm not a constitutional scholar, I think a case can be made that laws enacted without being read by the legislators who voted for them are unconstitutional.

Under the Constitution (which each Congressman is sworn to uphold), Congress has power to "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" its enumerated powers. Can anyone tell me by what stretch of the imagination a law which has not been read can be considered "necessary and proper"? I think the constitutional language "necessary and proper" carries with it a requirement that congressmen use judgment and deliberation, that they have at least thought about the legislation they are passing, and therefore, I would argue that there is a Constitutional requirement that any law being made must first have been read.

Surely, if the right to privacy can be read into the penumbra of rights, it is not asking too much to recognize that legislators -- who are required to determine whether a law is necessary and proper -- cannot perform that legislative function unless they have read the law in question.

There is also a well-known legal doctrine (which the Supreme Court has recognized) known as Ignorantia juris non excusat -- often summed up as "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." In order for this principle to have any meaning in law or equity, it would be manifestly unfair to allow legislators to be passing laws of which they themselves are ignorant.

Does the constitutional due process requirement prohibit their enforcement? I think it might. According to the the United States Supreme Court, due process is violated "if a practice or rule offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental."

If it isn't a fundamental principle that legislators must read the laws they require us to obey, then what is a fundamental principle?

That legislators read a law they would require us to obey is as fundamental as the right to be present in court. It's as fundamental as the right to be free from taxation without representation. Such things were considered worth fighting for when this country was born.

Whatever could be next? If they pass laws that haven't been read (and might contain anything), why bother with other legal niceties?

Just pass a bill establishing socialism and let the bureaucrats work out the details later.