There are several ways to improve the healthcare market to lower costs, but they involve freeing doctors and insurance companies from burdensome regulation instead of creating a socialist “public option”.  Universal healthcare would be an affront to human liberty and the value of human life.

Let’s imagine the following scenario: Fred is a middle aged family man.  He believes bread is too expensive.  While he is able to buy bread, a significant portion of his family’s budget goes to buying this important staple of the American diet.  He is bothered that bread costs so much and feels that many Americans are struggling to afford bread – some even go without.  He supports a “public option” as an alternative to the “greedy” bread makers.  Government steps in and says, “Some Americans do not have access to bread at the current price of $0.50 per loaf. That isn’t fair and therefore "US Brand” bread will be $0.25 a loaf! It will be provided by the government! We will let the other bread makers continue to operate, but this program will keep them in check from pursuing unjust profits and make sure affordable bread is available to Americans that want it!“.

These events would, quite predictably, follow:

  • the US Brand bread section would be cleared and sit empty since demand would far outstrip supply at $0.25 while other bread makers sections would be cleared much slower, if at all
  • most companies would begin to abandon or curtail the production of bread since they can’t feed their own families without profits and they can’t compete with the government’s price.
  • Fred and his ilk begin to complain that US Brand bread is never in stock! How can he have affordable bread if it’s not available??? Some people are getting US Brand bread while others are not!
  • The government continues taking customers from the private bread companies, eventually bankrupting most bread companies, leaving only a few “premium” bread makers
  • Costs are growing astronomically as government tries to produce enough bread to meet the demand for "affordable bread”.
  • Since bread is such an important staple of the American diet (one might call it a “Right” after a little bit of peyote), government needs to control the CONSUMPTION and COST of bread to make sure everyone has access to affordable bread
  • Government begins to set prices for wheat when sold to the government
  • Wheat farmers begin to replace lost income with higher prices to what private bread companies still exist, further increasing the price of private bread
  • To ensure all families have access to US Brand bread, Government passes a law limiting bread purchases to “1 loaf per family, per week”
  • Fred now gets 1 loaf per week (on paper), but even with this new law he is often unable to get his allotment. He waits sometimes months to get his 1 loaf for the week that has long since past (government isn’t very efficient as it turns out). Plus he’s used to having 2 or 3 loafs a week.
  • The costs are still growing dramatically – CBO projects 10 years of life left before the government is out of money from the costs of making bread
  • Government decides, in order to keep costs from bankrupting the treasury, that it cannot meet the demand for bread at $0.25. But it cannot raise the direct price of bread or it would be “unaffordable”… so they pass a excise taxes of $0.05 on a dozen other common household items. And they limit the weekly allotment to ½ loaf per week.
  • Fred begins to be grumpy about the cost of other goods affecting his family budget and his decreased amount of bread…
  • … then he learns they serve pumpernickel at all government functions… and he realizes that there is nowhere else to go for regular bread…

So what do we end up with? Well, we’d have “affordable bread”. but it would be rationed and often require waiting a long time to be available. Furthermore, the excise taxes make the overall cost to Fred larger than if he hadn’t asked the government to help in the first place! And to pour salt in the wound, it appears that those in power have been getting all the bread they want during this whole mess! There still exists a small market for “premium” bread, but it’s much more expensive than what he was paying before the Government involved itself.  Effectively Fred has no choice than to take the bread the government provides, delays and quality problems included.

That story gets much more serious when we imagine we are talking about healthcare and not bread.

Economies are about allocating scarce resources. There will always be unequal access to these resources. The difference is that in a FREE society the access is determined by individual choices, limited only by talent and ambition. In a command and control society, access to resources is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats – power brokers. Warren Buffet might have billions of dollars, but he can’t deny me healthcare. To me, that is a very important distinction.

As free people we make individual value judgements everyday that are not measurable (“sally drinks a little too much, john spends too much time in front of the TV”). But when a government (at least one bound by Laws) makes these judgements, it must rely on things that can be measured. If your elderly mother or father is sick, as individuals we determine the right course of action based on our family values and amongst each other (“what does Dad want to do?”, “what do I want to do to help”?). When government makes decisions it must weight the “social benefit” as it can be measured (“what is the expected life span after this procedure?”, “will this person produce more than the cost of the procedure before their death?”).  If choices must be made, families should be making them – not bureaucrats.

If you, however, believe we are nothing but cogs in the societal wheel and that we have no worth beyond what we give back to “the people”, then government healthcare will be right up your alley. In fact, you may even forego lifesaving treatment in old age and welcome death when it comes because you feel you can no longer “contribute” to society (hell, at that point life will have become nothing but pain and toil to the collective anyway).

There are real ways to reduce the cost of healthcare – letting insurance cross state lines and limiting malpractice damages are a couple of good solutions.  But more fundamentally, government healthcare reduces us all to statistics.  I am someone who believes human life has intrinsic value.  My worth is not determined by what I can “give back”, what Government determines it to be, or what you think it is. As an individual, it is my responsibility to provide for my health – not yours.  Let’s find ways to open up the market in healthcare without reducing our lives to numbers in a government spreadsheet.