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

Wells here

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry I can't be bothered logging in. Anyway: 1. Thanks for noticing and engaging the argument. 2. This guy, who I don't know, offers a fairly robust rebuttal of my position: http://paleshadow.livejournal.com/256611.html

3. When I wrote "American-style," I was being a bit provocative, although it seems to have worked, and therefore to have been worth it. Actually, of course US health care as such is probably even dumber than ours. But it's a great big world out there. The number of countries that FORBID market access to basic health care is vanishingly small (Canada), as is the number of countries that allow ONLY market access to basic care (USA). Even that is an oversimplification, of course, and I'd hate to piss Skeezix off any worse than I have. But my point, and I do have one, is this: nearly every industrialized country offers a core of state-sponsored care to make sure illness doesn't spiral anyone into the crapper, AND a supplementary market-determined level of extra care. In the latter case, it's almost never cash out of pocket that pays for extra care, it's insurance. Private insurance, company insurance, etc. When I was a student in France I had basic care and I paid, as almost every student in France does, a modest premium package for very substantial supplementary care. That's so obvious it genuinely baffles me that it's banned in Canada for most services.

Incidentally, the idea that market alternatives will skim off the best practitioners and leave the dross to the masses is also obviously true. In Canada, we call this preserve of the finest practitioners whom only the top dollar can buy by a name: Vermont. Ever noticed all the Canadian doctors there? If you close your eyes, maybe they'll go away.

Re: Wells here

[skeezix1000.livejournal.com]

Hee.

But still, can't get my mind around "supplementary market-determined level of extra care". Yes, the Rosedale matron already can get better health care than the St. Jamestown mother, but why as a society should we be facilitating that? I'm hardly a socialist, BTW.

Re: Wells here

[c9.livejournal.com]

Hi there Paul,

1. Happy to oblige. :)
2. Thanks for the link. It does put the pieces together well.
3. I was unaware of how polite and bilingual Vermont was! Perhaps I shall visit. I don't have a magic solution for this, but maybe it's so small that the system absorbs the impact without (much) pain, whereas creating a nationwide structure for the same stuff to happen would be too much.

I'm often jealous of columnists -- they're so confident in their opinions (which I can be too) but they have some facts to back them up. If only I had a Lexis-Nexis account or something. :)