If Living Were A Thing That Money Could Buy
Libertarian James McPhail wonders what is wrong with free market health care:
It would be advantageous to review the true meaning of free market health care:
Real free market health care would require real freedom for doctors and hospitals to refuse treatment based on the ability to pay. EMDALA, the law which currently forces doctors and hospitals to provide emergency treatment, would have to be repealed. As things currently stand, hospitals that do not operate emergency rooms have a distinct cost advantage over those that do. Emergency doctors can count on a greater percentage of unpaid bills than others.
This is a fine example of extreme generosity with others resources - something that Mr. McPhail rightly scorns.
Real free market health care would also require us to follow through and apply tough love to the so called working poor throughout their lives. We should make everyone pay for their own care throughout their lives.
Suppose that your sloth and stupidity - and we all know that the poor are morally inferior to us, otherwise poverty and dependence might be a real possibility in our own lives - left you with not so many health care options. Somehow you managed to develop high blood pressure, maybe salty snacks or maybe a difficult, high stress, dead end job that you could have avoided if only you had read Atlas Shrugged.
As our medical system currently stands, once you retire or become disabled, you are off the market. At this point the government picks up all the bills for the consequences of your untreated high blood pressure, including possibly dialysis, oxygen for congestive heart failure and so on.
A great share of Medicare expenditures go for this sort of treatment.
There is something to be said for a fully free market system. For a great many medical conditions our current system is unbelievably stingy with treatments and medical help in the initial phases, when treatment and help might actually do some good. After the condition has progressed, and treatment becomes an expensive way prolong life at the cost of great suffering to the treated, we become prodigal in our spending.
This would require us to fully adhere to free market principles and to accept the idea of colorful dying beggars. Which would be a small price to pay for lower taxes. Besides, ministering to the dying poor might give the Catholic Church a new mission and take its mind off what is going on in our bedrooms.
Yes, some low wage earners would not have as many options as their wealthier neighbors. How is that different from every other aspect of consumer goods?Wonks Anonymous stands in awe of this beautifully crafted rhetoric. It sounds so much nicer and cleaner than Wonks Anonymous own crude characterizations of free market health of free market health care which involve dying children and streets made lively with critically ill beggars.
It would be advantageous to review the true meaning of free market health care:
Real free market health care would require real freedom for doctors and hospitals to refuse treatment based on the ability to pay. EMDALA, the law which currently forces doctors and hospitals to provide emergency treatment, would have to be repealed. As things currently stand, hospitals that do not operate emergency rooms have a distinct cost advantage over those that do. Emergency doctors can count on a greater percentage of unpaid bills than others.
This is a fine example of extreme generosity with others resources - something that Mr. McPhail rightly scorns.
Real free market health care would also require us to follow through and apply tough love to the so called working poor throughout their lives. We should make everyone pay for their own care throughout their lives.
Suppose that your sloth and stupidity - and we all know that the poor are morally inferior to us, otherwise poverty and dependence might be a real possibility in our own lives - left you with not so many health care options. Somehow you managed to develop high blood pressure, maybe salty snacks or maybe a difficult, high stress, dead end job that you could have avoided if only you had read Atlas Shrugged.
As our medical system currently stands, once you retire or become disabled, you are off the market. At this point the government picks up all the bills for the consequences of your untreated high blood pressure, including possibly dialysis, oxygen for congestive heart failure and so on.
A great share of Medicare expenditures go for this sort of treatment.
There is something to be said for a fully free market system. For a great many medical conditions our current system is unbelievably stingy with treatments and medical help in the initial phases, when treatment and help might actually do some good. After the condition has progressed, and treatment becomes an expensive way prolong life at the cost of great suffering to the treated, we become prodigal in our spending.
This would require us to fully adhere to free market principles and to accept the idea of colorful dying beggars. Which would be a small price to pay for lower taxes. Besides, ministering to the dying poor might give the Catholic Church a new mission and take its mind off what is going on in our bedrooms.
Speaking of carefully crafted rhetoric, Mr. Martin's apparent love for taxes omits an essential element of wealth redistribution: forceful coercion by the gov't at the point of a gun.
No, people who are poor aren't morally inferior as he sarcastically misrepresents as the libertarian viewpoint. Rather, poor people (all people really) are capable of making decisions for themselves without "Big Brother" interference. Just as many people have stopped saving for their own retirements since the advent of Social Security; they likewise will cease providing for their medical needs as well. (Remember the broken promise of the gov't that SS benefits were to be a supplement to one's own nest egg? How many people depend upon those benefits for more than 50% of their retiement income?) With the aging population trend, the CBO's data show that gov't will have to cut benefits, raise the eligibility age, and/or raise taxes to keep the system from crashing. Throw in Medicare and the proposed health care changes, and you have a recipe for financial disaster. Eventually, China et al might not be willing to buy our debt indefinitely.
I find big gov't advocates display a unique bigotry: Apparently, they feel the poor are too ignorant to make their own decisions. We "the ones who know what's good for all" make our own decisions, but you folks can't. (And no I'm not talking about the mentally challenged.) Before you go raiding my savings or paycheck to ease your middle class guilt, you might ask those folks you want to assign to permanent adolescence: Are you over 18? How many packs a day have you smoked? Do you cook or eat out mainly?
Sure, there is room for a "safety net," which purportedly the EMDALA creates. What's being proposed expands and creates something wholly different. Stupid behavior should not be subsidized--irrespective of politics or economic status. The doomsday rhetoric of the indigent simply dying in the street does not mirror reality.
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