Well, let’s look for a sec at the societal costs.
Start with the premise that healthy people tend to be far more productive than injured or unhealthy people. A society with physically healthy people will be more economically healthy than a society where a significantly larger proportion of its population is injured or unhealthy. Injury and ill health represents a very real economic cost, which can be determined in comparisons of GNP. Brundtland and the WHO have been pushing this quite strongly.
So there you are, with this ongoing cost to society of injured and unhealthy people not pulling their weight. What can you do about it? A combination of litigation, insurance, and regulation.
In the USA, corps are kept in line by litigation more so than in many other nations. In particular, massive punitive damages out of all proportion to the injury are awarded to reflect the harm done and harm potentially done to other persons but not brought to court. This way relatively minor injuries which otherwise might not be litigated are encouraged to be litigated in hopes of a large settlement, and the threat of such a settlement encourages corps to not let little things slip by simply because the degree of injury in a large number of incidents would be minor. Thus the McDonalds coffee award. If the award were in proportion to the injury, McDonalds would not have lowered the temperature of their coffee to a more reasonable level. Because the award took into account the estimated frequency of similar spills and the ensuing minor, non-litigated injuries, the punitive portion of the award was set high enough to deter the corp from continuing it’s unsafe practices. The cost of litigation of this sort gets built into the product and passed on to the consumer.
What if such litigation is not permitted? Then insurance plays a more dominant role. Let’s face it, if you live in a county where corps are kept in line, you do not go overboard on insurance, whereas if you live in a country where corps are not as responsible, you load up on insurance. The cost of this is borne two ways: by the individual, and/or by the government.
I can’t think of any country where corps are out of line but still most individuals are well off enough to load up on insurance. It just doesn’t work that way. Thus most countries either take the economic hit of injured and unhealthy people and let the corps do their own thing (e.g. many developing nations), or the governments provide the insurance (most developed nations). To keep costs in line, governments which provide insurance do two things. First, they streamline systemic costs by introducing no-fault regimes where feasible, ranging anywhere from universal medical care to social and disability insurance to statutory accident benefits. The public pays these costs through taxes. Second, governments regulate to keep corps in line by setting standards which ultimately help protect the public. These costs are passed on to the consumers.
Obviously there is a combination of GNP hit, litigation, and regulation in all nations. When comparing apples with apples, the USA turns more toward litigation while other developed nations turn more toward public insurance and regulation. Developing nations just take the GNP hit and continue struggling.
So when Peace comes out with Henry VI, Part II, Act IV, Scene II, I wonder if he actually thought it through, for the USA model is one which places proportionately more of the cost of injured and unhealthy people on consumers rather than on the general public. It’s either pay the lawyers and plaintiffs (most American’s preference), or pay more taxes and suffer more regulation (my personal preference), or start enjoying third world living unless you are one of the luck few. I doubt if Peace thought through his economic regime any more than Shakespeare’s rebel and butcher did.