No environmental and public health regulations => universal health care

Great Debates
1

My belief is that if one doesn’t want to enforce environmental regulations against facilities through the instruments of federal and state agencies AND if one wants to get rid of the FDA, USDA, the CDC, and other governmental agencies that facilitate the execution of public health legislation, then society needs to make sure that the victims of the free market are always compensated. One way is through the courts: Company sells toxic product and then reaches a settlement with everyone who was affected or pays a heavy fine. But the best way to mitigate against the downsides of a perfectly free market is to provide a health care system that is open and free to everyone.

Why?

Because without regulation, you will never be able to find out who the bad guys are and what exactly they did to you. Without a protected water supply, enforced vehicle emissions standards, and proper inspection of facilities handling drugs, food, and other consumer products, a person will never know what is causing his cancers, skin problems, migraines, learning disabilities, and infertility. Without routine monitoring and enforcement, people will not know if the factory in their neighborhood is polluting their local stream. So they will not know if their children should avoid swimming and not eat the fish that live there. Without the dreaded “Big Brother”, people will not know who to sue so that they can get compensated, unless they have enough money to hire their own team of consultants.

Thus, it is only fair that everyone shares in the cost of such a reckless society by providing free health care services.

Agree or disagree?

Now, we fortunately do not live in such a society. We do have a system in place that provides a modicum of protection. But it is far from perfect. The system is limited by what science can prove and the political will of legislators. Sadly, the latter often wins over the former. I posit that because of this and the fact that there are health risks associated with living in this society that are completely unavoidable (and maybe even unknowable), then it is only fair that society mitigate for the harm it allows by providing affordable (preferably universal) health care for everyone.

Agree or disagree?

2

I think anyone that cares about the effect environment has on the health of citizens will already support universal healthcare.

Why? Just world hypothesis / strict father framing: dispositional approach to others. If you are rich and good things happen to you because you own a polluting factory, you are a good person. Government limitations on your property rights are bad because they are punishing success. If you are sick because you live next to a polluting factory, it’s your own fault you can’t afford to live in a thousand acre mansion.

3

I’m for both, but your argument is kind of backwards if the point of removing government regulation is to encourage good corporate citizenship via the markets and tort liability. If health care costs are spread among innocent parties you reduce the incentive for private actors to stop injuring people.

4

It has to be spread out since if everyone is polluting, it will be that much harder to sue any one entity. How will you be able to prove that it’s the dioxins in your groundwater from the plastics factory causing your cancer, and not the dirty air you’re breathing or the contaminated food you’re eating? How will you be able to prove it’s the dioxins from the plastics factory, and not the legacy PCBs from the power company next door. Or the interaction of both in your system, which are also interacting with your impaired immune system (antibiotics in your food) and your idiosyncratic genetic predispositions?

And without an enforcement agency, who is going to collect the data you will need to bring a successful suit against someone?

5

Interesting idea. Libertarian types tell us that we don’t need to stop companies from polluting in advance because they can be sued. (Some seem to say they won’t pollute in the first place because of the consequences, but that is such obvious hogwash we can ignore it.) Now, it is clearly economically inefficient for each person injured by a polluter to individually sue, since such suits are expensive for the person suing and being sued, and the courts sometimes award excessive damages. So, libertarian types should be in favor of universal health care in order to prepare for their libertarian paradise.

Do I have you right?

6

We could call it the Attorney’s Full Employment Act.

One problem: if a company breaks a law by polluting, they can be compelled to cease and desist toot sweet, whereas a suit for damages may ultimately bear fruit, but the pollution may continue for as long as the opposing attorneys can frolic in the paradise of billable hours.

I don’t want people compensated for the damage done them, I want them undamaged in the first place.

7

Yes.

Because not only is it expensive for people to sue, it is harder for them to prove damage has been done. If you take away your state’s environmental protection agency, who will issue permits for discharges and mandate that the facility stick to permitted limits? Who will monitor the streams in which they discharge to see if they are in compliance? Who will make sure that there is some coordination of the discharges among facilities discharging into the same stream?

Companies will hire their own staff to maintain safety. But in many cases, this will just be window dressing. Without an impartial agency to answer to, companies will lie and legal-weasel out of everything.

“How do you know those are our dioxins in your groundwater? There are five other facilities in this area that produce dioxins and other toxics. And as you can clearly see from our own monitoring records, we have never exceeded dioxins standards in our discharge. So where is your proof that we are the bad guys?”

Most pollution comes from nonpoint sources. If your air is foul, who are you gonna sue? All the people in your city driving uninspected cars? Factories a hundred miles away? If your favorite swimming hole is unswimmable because everyone in your neighborhood uses straight pipes, are you going to sue “everyone”? Good luck with that.

8

Better to prevent harm than reduce it, wherever possible, but most people who support that kind of free market don’t do so on moral principle. It’s no good to show them what society should do, or its responsibilities, or how one person’s fortune can make someone else sick. For various reasons (having only ever experienced being near the top of the chain, brainwashing, a rare degree of selfishness, social darwinism) it’s being advocated for because of its pros and cons, not despite them.

9

Agree. The logic is appealing.

I’ve never been able to understand why there’s so much opposition to universal health care in the U.$. when practically every other developed country has it. It’s always good to hear another argument in its favor.

10

I think your conclusion does follow from your premise, but I think it’s better to enforce environmental regulations against facilities through the instruments of federal and state agencies. That is, I’d be in favor of preventing the harm in the first place.

11

I disagree.

Not with teh premise of universal health care, which I am all for. I’ve lived roughly half my life under a single payer system and half with private/employer subsidized insurance. I’ll take single payer any day. Setting my personal financial benefits at odds with those of the company that is my gateway to health care has never struck me as a good thing.

But your premise posits a society in which teh first principle appears to be “do not interfere with the free market”. I;m no tsure that there is a strong argument that having grasped so tightly to the invisible hand a society must therefore also take steps to mitigate the consequences of unfettered capitalism on public health? WHy only health? Why not poverty? Starvation? Access to water? One can certainly posit deleterious effects to many members of such a society, and all would suffer teh same challenges in assigning single cause or single culpability.

It strikes me that our hypothetical society might simply hold tight to their faith that teh market will eventually provide the best available solution for all (keepping th efaith, as it were, in free market absolutism). Alternatively, such a society might craft new standards of liability to allow individuals to more easily claim damages for broad environmental damages. Another choice might be to attempt to redress the imbalance in power through information, passing strict regulations around disclosure, labeling, etc. and putting real teeth into the penalties for any violation.

12

No, I can’t see a federal advertising/labelling standards committee ever being extant in a free market system. The anarchocapitalists I’ve talked to hold only one branch of government to be necessary: the judiciary. In fact, some have argued for a mercenary judiciary, where those that are corrupt will eventually go out of business because corruption is not viable in a free market. Essentially in their view, if one is stung by a fraudulent business practice, one was “asking for it”. Though they see room for independent adjudicators vis. “Which?” and the concept of intellectual property (since property rights are all encompassing).

13

Your solutions require governmental intervention. Stricter laws are worthless without an enforcement arm, which is what our hypothetical government would not have (unless you forsee police officers being used to inspect facilities and conduct routine environmental monitoring). And even if it were easier to bring claims, the plaintiff would still have to go through the enormous expense of providing sufficient proof of harm.

Let’s say a grandfather feeds a child a can of spaghetti while babysitting her one day. He knows the little girl has a serious allergy to eggs, and that’s why he scoured the label on the can to make sure there were no eggs listed as ingredients. They were not there, so he felt safe giving her the food.

Moments after eating, the girl falls down with convulsions. She’s rushed to the hospital, and now she’s in a coma. The doctors think there’s a good possibility that she will be severely brain damaged.

Under the current system, the grandfather can call the food safety hotline to USDA and register a complaint against the makers of the food product. Someone on the other end of the line will request the lot number on the can and then initiate an investigation. Based on the information they receive, Grandpa can make a determination that there’s sufficient grounds for a lawsuit. USDA can also make a determination if the manufacture needs to be fined and/or make changes to its operations to prevent this thing from happening again (maybe there’s not a problem with eggs, but they find something else is fucked-up).

You take away the food safety hotline, inspectors, and compliance officers and what can Grandpa do? Hire his own private crack team, who will charge him an arm and a leg to do all the investigation? Why should the food manufacturer even let these wiseguys into their facility? They don’t answer to just any ole person knocking on the door, you know. And let’s say they do let them in and the crack team does find problems that Grandpa can run to the courts with. The food manufacturer will probably settle with him before they make it there, since this is bad press and they don’t want people knowing they are running a slipshod operation. So no one will know what they did, and there’s no enforcement arm left in the government to make sure they don’t fuck up again.

As I said before, most pollution is of nonpoint origin. If there’s mercury in your private lake, you could point fingers at the coal company next door, but those mercury atoms probably traveled from hundreds, thousands of miles away too. That’s what Dominion Power will tell you. They will show you their own monitoring records do not jibe with your claim that they are discharging illegally. You can hire another expensive crack team, but even they will not be able to prove that your lake is being polluted by their smokestacks. So their information may be used by the government to fine them, but you personally will probably not benefit.

Furthermore, if they are emitting toxic substances that do not even have regulations tied to them and those toxics are reducing your fertility or giving you cancer, you will never be able to get compensation for that. This happens now. We are currently exposed to thousands of potential toxics that the government does not regulate, either because there is not enough proof to convince pro-business politicians they need to be regulated, or because we lack the technology to do anything practical about them. This supports the argument for universal health care. People’s health should not be at the whims of political forces and nascent science. In exchange for dealing with the vagaries of a free market, the people should be given free medicine. It seems like a fair exchange to me.

14

First, the OP clearly states this is a solution for those who don’t want to enforce prior constraint on pollution, so your logic is faulty. And how do you wish to prevent the harm in the first place? More regulations, like those created by that unperson Nixon? If you want a free market solution, which would say the cost in overhead of regulations that apply even to non-polluters is greater than the benefit, then UHC might be a good way of letting the companies pollute, which supposedly leads to benefit across the economy which we all share, and pay for the downside from the general economy also. After all, the person who get sick from pollution probably has not shared in the benefits to the economy from allowing pollution very much.

15

Perhaps - but those anrachocapitalists are nowhere in the OP. In fact, since it posits a Universal Health are system as a solution then it clearly depends upon governmental structures beyond the judiciary.

If you want to posit a system in which no governmental agency beyond the judiciary exists, then that is fine. In such a system Universal Health Care cannot exist and is thus not a viable solution to the issues of poisoning the commons.

16

Yes, as does yours. Unless you imagine Universal Health Care will somehow materialize without governmental action. Your OP specified teh abolishment of environmental and public health regulations. It did not specify teh abolishment of all governmental powers to regulate the economy.

Again - you made no such specification in your OP. If you want to posit an additional requirement in which the government has non enforcement arm then that is fine. I do wonder, though, how will Universal Health Care be assured in such a system?

The rest of your post seems to be arguing that because of the limitations of our current consumer rights systems no effective consumer rights agency could ever be put into place, and that only the current FDA et al would ever be able to enforce truth in labeling laws, etc. I’m not sure why either assumption should be considered compelling to our hypothetical new society.

To me as well, but I don’t think you have made the case that it is the only fair solution.

17

Perhaps you do not understand how the government enforces health and environmental laws.

Anti-regulation/pro-free market people have a problem with the government interfering with the means of production. They believe that the free market is self-correcting, and that external oversight is intrusive and restrictive. Pro-free market people don’t have a problem with all laws or all enforcement. That’s why you often see concessions made for police departments by libertarians. But they do have a problem with laws that reign in the free market.

How do you enforce regulations without regulatory agencies? We can’t enforce criminal laws without a police force. We can’t enforce environmental laws without compliance officers, inspectors, assessors, permit writers, etc.

Because UHC is not anything like the FDA, USDA, or EPA? Libertarians don’t hate all government, just that aspect of government which ties the hands of business. Just in case it wasn’t clear, my OP describes an extreme Libertaria. Not Anarchia. UHC would not be anti-free market, so it’s allowed. It would be another service provided by a limited government.

Yes, that is what I believe. I have no reason to believe that people have a problem specifically with FDA/USDA/EPA etc. They have a problem with what these things represent. So no, my hypothetical doesn’t allow for a replacement agency. Anything that keeps the market completely free is not allowed.

I’m open to hearing ideas about what would be fairer that are within the limits of the hypothetical (e.g., the government does not enforce environmental or public health regulations).

18

This basically amounts to polluter’s insurance. I get all the profit from my noxious factory, but the costs are spread out across everybody. Where’s my incentive to clean up?

19

They’re also the ones most likely to oppose any tax, especially for something they won’t get much benefit from. See Pete Peterson on social security, for example. They’re already going to be divorced from the proximate effects of pollution and hiring the most expensive private surgeons, why would they seek to pay for someone else’s mistake (namely, not being a rugged individualist millionaire)? Dagny Taggart would frown on them from heaven.

20

But pollution prevention / environmental regulations are part of health care: it’s preventative health care, on a massive scale. UHC leads back to environmental regs.