On Healthcare

There is an aspect to public healthcare that doesn’t get much discussion. The likelihood of it being yet another way in which we willingly give up yet more and more of our freedom to make personal choices is a clear and present danger. Here is how the process would likely work:

1. The first thing that happens is seemingly innocuous from a liberty perspective. The government gets involved in the actuarial responsibilities related to healthcare.
2. Step two is that costs become difficult to control.
3. Step three is that some bright knucklehead in Congress or more likely in a regulatory agency in a matter unrelated directly to healthcare realizes that some policy changes in his or her purview might be made and his reason for pushing it is that it will aid the financial burden pressed on them by healthcare. And consider the nature of policy chances which have an affect on health. Are these changes liable to increase or decrease your ability to make free choices?
4. Then others will notice that worked … and the process will little by little erode the range of reasonable choices left to the non-wealthy.

And this avenue, not really pushed today by those who oppose government healthcare actually gives a big opportunity for a conservative opposition leader to get a big start. The Democrats have come a long way from their populist roots. In their eagerness to push back and distance themselves from the evil “big corporate interests” (in favour of big government interests it might be noted), they’ve also made a mistake. They’ve also distanced themselves from all business, including the small ones. Populism and independence from government was in part the card that Ron Paul played. And he got some mileage with it, which says something because he’s well, something of a flake.

Filed under: Government • Healthcare • Mark O.

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