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

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. :)