Author Topic: My Problem with Universal Health Care  (Read 943 times)

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Giuliano Taverna

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Re: My Problem with Universal Health Care
« on: September 07, 2009, 11:55:59 pm »
I don't agree with your assertion that to want people to have access to healthiness is to believe it to be a right. I have always drawn the distinction between rights and publicly provided services.

A right is something you have, that a dictator can take away from you. Such as your life, your property, your freedom, your ability to speak, ect. That is the basis of the bill of rights in this country. To protect people from other people, and from the government. Not to protect people from themselves or from nature. This I believe is primarily their responsibility.

I also see a fundamental flaw with your proposed system. If you cut compensation to doctors, less will aspire to be doctors. The fewer doctors there are, the longer the wait time will be to see them. This is why you can't fix prices. The same holds true of any commodity. if you say grain can only be a certain price, then people will stop growing it and chose another more profitable crop.

Managing the economy in this way will only guarantee that for every sector you regulate, others will expand, and that one will contract. This will create shortages in some places, and unneeded surpluses in others.

For your system to work, you would need to be able to force a certain number of people to become doctors. And that would require radically changing our system of government.

Really, to manage the economy, you would need to manage the entire economy, and that would mean every poor person would cease to be "unlucky" and become a victim of the state. A government that runs the economy, is responsible for the effects of the economy.

Food, shelter, and other necessities have always been part of the capitalists system ever since we attained a division of labor such that certain people grew crops and others sold them.

The issue is simply making sure that enough independent entities offer the good or service so that there can be competition among them to win customers. This also requires savvy customers who understand what they are buying and how much it ought to be worth.

Now I am not suggesting capitalism is perfect, capitalism is the worst possible economic system except for all the ones that have been tried in its place.
"It is the duty of a good shepherd to shear his sheep, not to skin them." Tiberius Caesar