Health care is not a right

Scott Holleran's blog has a link to this speech by Leonard Peikoff, written in 1993 during the attempt by President Clinton to massively increase government control over the health-care industry. It makes an excellent case that it is not only impractical for the government to take over health care, but also immoral.

Further discussion of "How American Health Care Killed My Father," by David Goldhill (Atlantic Magazine, September 2009)

E: Ah, the art of cherry-picking.

JCB: Hard to believe you could say that with a straight face. But, since I can't see your face, maybe you didn't. ;^) There was no need to cherry pick. I simply selected a few examples that I liked. It wasn't difficult since I liked virtually everything, except certain aspects of his prescribed cure. Even his cure incorporates some sound ideas and would probably be significantly better than the metastasizing tumor that is our current system. But, since he so deftly shows that the problems we're experiencing are due to almost entirely to distortions of the free market produced by government interference, it amazes me that he fails to see that the optimal cure is to simply eliminate that interference as much as possible.

E: Watch out, you might find yourself a seasonal laborer and without health insurance at all.  I can practice this fine art as well but I don't have time this morning, I have to get to my wage-slave job, that...gives me virtually unlimited health care.  I'd prefer the government just pay me directly out of pocket as it would be cheaper for the taxpayer and other people could get their share.  I will try to get to the picking tonight.  I came away from re-reading the article excited about his proposals.

JCB: Not exciting to me, but certainly far superior to what Congress and the President are proposing.

E: The private insurance industry would be gone!

JCB: You act as though that would be a good thing. Insurance in every other area works well, since the free market is more-or-less allowed to operate as it should. There are no serious crises in life insurance (despite con-jobs like Bank on Yourself), auto insurance, home insurance, etc. As the author shows, our health-insurance crises are due to the heavy hand of government, not the invisible hand of the free market. So why not allow the free market to operate in health insurance as well? What is it about it that is so fundamentally different than other forms of insurance?

That said, his proposal actually might not be too bad, since it would only be for catastrophic insurance. It wouldn't be universal coverage for all health-care-related expenses. For non-catastrophic health-care expenses, the free market would be allowed to operate. At least that's what it sounds like he's proposing. I like that aspect of his plan. Still, I suspect there'd be serious negative unintended consequences involved with giving the government a monopoly on catastrophic health insurance and forcing people to buy it. Due to the complexity of the economy, it's hard to predict what they'd be. I suspect that in our political climate it'd probably turn into another enormous Ponzi scheme, such as Goldhill himself warns us against:

"We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results..."

Also, from the standpoint of individual liberty, forcing people to buy health insurance would represent a major loss of individual rights and would set a very bad precedent.

I'll be interested to see if you can find any point in the article at which he blames our health-care woes on the free market, rather than on market distortions caused by government interference. I read the article fairly carefully and didn't find a single instance in which he does that. But I might have missed something. At any rate, I'm afraid you're the one who's going to have to do some intensive cherry picking. ;^)

Socialism restricts individual freedom

A fundamental problem I have with socialism is the extent to which it restricts personal freedom of choice. Suppose a citizen of a country with a purely socialized health-care system becomes seriously ill. What treatment options does she have? If she happens to be wealthy enough to travel to a more free-market-oriented country for treatment, then she will have other options. But suppose she isn't wealthy. In that case she has no viable option other than to accept whatever treatment the government-imposed rationing bureaucracy is willing to provide. If the system provides her with inferior, outmoded care or puts her on a long waiting list for time-critical treatments or surgery, she simply has to accept that. She could support political reforms that would reduce the degree of rationing and/or implement a more free-market system. But as a seriously-ill person, she'd have little time or energy for that. Even assuming she were able to achieve such reforms, she could easily be dead long before they were implemented. Now suppose she lived in a country with a free-market health-care system. In that case, she'd have myriad treatment options. It's true that she'd have to pay out of pocket and/or rely on whatever insurance she happened to have. But in a truly free-market system, health-care-related prices would be dramatically lower than prices in our existing system, due to the proper functioning of competition. Even if she couldn't afford her treatments, she's still have many options. She could borrow money, ask for donations, and/or rely on non-profit, charitable medical organizations.

Now consider the freedom of choice available to someone who's career goal is to work in the health-care industry. In a purely socialized system, her only option would be to become an employee of the government. Suppose that--for whatever reason--the government wouldn't hire her, or the pay and/or working conditions didn't appeal to her. She'd be out of luck. In a free-market system, however, she'd have a vast array of choices. She could apply for a jobs with a large number of for-profit or non-profit medical organizations. Or, if she was an entrepreneurial person, she could start her own organization.

Some may believe that these kinds of restrictions on freedom are a small price to pay for achieving such goals as universal health care for everyone. Unfortunately, they are not, as anyone who's had direct experience with them can attest. The lack of personal freedom inherent in socialism constitutes an intolerable violation of our most basic individual rights. The free market is the only economic system capable of upholding our "unalienable Rights" to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."