Free Health Care vs Free Food and Water

[c9]

Paul Wells raises a simple question that I don't have a good answer for: if we consider food and water and health care all essential to life, why is there no government monopoly over food and water, but there is over health care?

I strongly support the idea of government-paid-for and you-can't-buy-better health care, but I'm very interested in hearing arguments that make me rethink my position. Mostly, I'm concerned that:

• Groups of people screw stuff up (in government we call this bureaucracy and red tape, but it exists in business too) but in government the overall goal is different than in a business (very roughly: "help" instead of "profit").
  
• A business is legally obligated to make money for shareholders, while governments don't have that restriction. This is not a bug, it's a feature.
• A so-called two-tier system (where the rich folk can buy faster care) would cause the better medical professionals to go where the money is, and then the care would worsen in quality and speed for the rest of the population.

So anyway: does this mean that I should support socialized food and water in addition to medicine? I don't know. But it's interesting to think about.

I haven't seen SiCKO yet, but hope to soon. I'm not really the target audience though.

Comments

[erinrogo.livejournal.com]

Dude,

The government does have a monopoly over water. All navigable waterways are owned by the federal government, the rest are provincial, and the provincial government is in charge of water treatment plants, the pipe system that gets it to your home, the sewers, etc. The hydro companies that you pay are heavily regulated, if they're even completely private?

In terms of food, it's also a very heavily regulated and subsidized industry. Without government intervention food would be far more expensive - in fact, Canada has nearly the lowest food prices in the world compared to average income. So food isn't exactly a monopoly, but it's not run on a pure business model either. Hence the extreme anger of most third world governments whose economies have been redesigned to export food to us while North American and European governments continue to be protectionist. Of course, I'd like to see even more food localism rather than greater trade openness, but that will require that subsidies shift towards small farmers who are growing food for human consumption rather than commodities and animal feed.

[c9.livejournal.com]

Dude,

I agree. I just feel like the sale of our water and food (excepting agri subsidies) is soooo close to being corporate-controlled, despite the various pseudo-controls we have now. Whereas the hospitals will take a bit more effort to get past the Canadian "no privatization" panic.

Agreed on food too -- I'd never thought of protectionism as an eco issue, but it actually is.