How many choices of healthcare system does someone in the UK have? How many choices does the average person in the US have, and please no populism about weapons and the poor downtrodden.
Furthermore, there are plenty of health care services in this country, such as laser eye surgery, or plastic surgery, which are supplied in more or less market settings. I don’t consider their efficiency an open and shut case, but it’s quite possible we’d be delighted if other areas of health care worked this well in terms of cost-lowering and innovation and even availability. It could be that these services are more transparent or it could be they are simply less regulated and further removed from third-party payment.
Actually, health care does involve other people a lot like the fire department example from above. Fire departments are considered an appropriate public service because having peoples’ houses burn down can endanger the homes of others in the neighborhood. Fire spreads and it does not care if you are a deserving person with no contract with a fire service, or a prudent homeowner with great insurance. If your asshole neighbor burns his house half down and yours catches during the inferno, that is a bad thing. The more it happens, the more the whole neighborhood sucks (lost wealth, lost time, potential attractive hazards of half burned homes, etc…)
Illnesses can also endanger the well-being of others. People who get ill can spread diseases. People struggling with poorly controlled chronic illness are stressed and more likely to get sicker, this takes time away from healthy family members who may lose jobs and opportunities caring for them. Having the walking sick out and about trying to work and shop after home-lancing MRSA boils, or driving while vision is eaten away by diabetes makes life a little bit more risky (and icky) for the well-insured. The health of the public IS a public health (and general welfare) concern.
This is debate is almost 100% pure non sequester.
You can get subsidized gas(unless the op meant gasoline), and water as includes in the subsidized rent of a section 8 apartment. If the OP meant gasoline for transportation, then that’s the right track. Not gasoline per se, but a comprehensive public transportation grid would be great. Unlike universal healthcare insurance, however, the vast rural stretches of America make this very difficult, and a project for a more enlightened age. At the very least you can always ride a bicycle unless you’re disabled, inwhich case society should help you. You can get a phone for cheap, and you can live without one if need be, same with electricity. About the only time you’d need phone access to survive involves 911, and most lines work for that, including deactivated cell phones.
Also if water from a section 8 isn’t good enough you could always use a public drinking fountain. Also, it may not be universal but parks around here have electrical outlets free for anyone to use. Food stamps even ensure basic food.
So to summarize: you already can get free electricity, and water plus unmetered in home water and gas for no extra cost. Also you can get food stamp assistance to feed yourself, and you can get a section 8 1/4 of your income.
The only thing that tells you to fuck off and die is financing healthcare insurance.
That’s the externality argument. But if you forgive me for saying so, you’re stretching it awfully far. So far, in fact, that it is ridiculous.
Most reasonably-thinking free marketeers and libertarians will open the door to government machinery if they feel there are true externalities that exist, and cannot be addressed by voluntary transactions between individuals.
Unfortunately, this opening is used to ‘reverse engineer’ externalities into just about any debate where a statist needs to justify the involvement of the government in what should otherwise be private decisions.
I will absolutely grant that the spread of infectious diseases, and possibly resistance to antibiotics, is an interesting externality that should be considered.
But honestly…is that your justification for taking over $2 trillion of the American economy and installing government control? That otherwise, the ravages of infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance that are spiralling out of control as we speak, will grow unabated and threaten the existence us all?
Give me a break. That’s the justification many also use for the FDA, which as far as I can tell from their website, doesn’t even mention those objectives as a reason for its existence at all. The FDA spends nearly all its time on mundane matters of drug approval and food inspection, which do not address externalities.
So yes, I will grant you that is an interesting factor that needs to be considered.
But no, it has nothing to do with a government takeover of the health care system, or any of the other governmental bodies (with the exception of the CDC…since I believe this sort of stuff is within their domain) like the FDA, CPSC, etc.
This misconception boggles me because I am a scientist. The** vast majority of research in the United States isalready funded by taxpayers**, like you and me, through the NIH and NSF. This is non-negoitable. Congress has interpreted the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8) as a directive from the Founding Fathers to support worthy projects that are scientifically, militarily, or artisitically useful to the United States. This isn’t to say that Pfizer and other corporations don’t publish research. They do. I can tell you as an reader of scientific literature, for every 100 scientific aritcles I read, maybe 5 or 6 of them have a private co-author like Pfizer and more often than not, the lead author is from a public University.
Given that Obama has already signaled Congress to increase funding to the NSF and NIH, I think we’ll start to see more innovations, not less.
I’m a scientist, too. Isn’t that neat? We’re both scientists.
The government also funds billions of dollars worth of bullshit research every year (‘Climate change’ is a recent favorite) that does nothing to improve the lives of average Americans. You can throw NASA in there as well, which burns through about $15 billion per year and accomplishes nothing of any practical significance.
I’ll grant you that the vast majority of published research papers have government funding behind them. But to me, that proves nothing other than artificially distorted supply (funding dollars) drives large amount of product, regardless of whether or not there is any demand for it. Sort of like the Soviet Union’s Central Production Authority deciding to produce 5 billion tons of steel pots every year, whether or not anybody actually wants to buy them.
How about if we work backwards from a few, recent innovations that have had actual impact on people’s lives and made it in the market, and trace the investment in capital that was required to get them to market? That way, we are restricting ourselves to things for which people have decided to spend their own money.
Going to the doctor when you’re ill is not preventative care. Going to a GP is a fuckton less expensive than going to an ER. Neither is preventative care.
If you’re going to be all snide and sighing, at least get your ducks in a row first.