The Foundation for Economic Education’s Sheldon Richman sets a few things straight regarding the health care debate in this excellent read.
On the argument that those who oppose Obamacare want to “do nothing”:
Anyone who thinks that the free-market solution means doing nothing is either ignorant or dishonest. Sorry, I see no other alternative. It doesn’t take much looking to see that we have nothing like a free market in medical services and insurance. Insisting we do is an effective way to assure that the free market is never considered as an alternative to the current State-ridden system.
(For a number of ideas for market-based reform from the state perspective, see the Civitas Institute’s Healthcare Blueprint.)
Are those who favor greater freedom from government control in the medical care/health insurance industry just shilling for corporate insurance?
The statist also shows his lack of understanding (or of honesty) by loosely accusing the free-market advocate of “being in the pocket of the insurance and drug companies.” Is it impossible that someone could sincerely believe that the market solution is just and efficient?
The market advocate rejects not only the so-called public option; he also favors dismantling the entire protectionist-regulatory-monopoly-privilege system the insurance companies have enjoyed for generations. No insurance company favors that.
On the issue of provision of medical care as some inherent “right”:
Of course, it can’t be a right. In the absence of a contract, no one can have a right to anything that must be provided by someone else’s labor. It really is that simple. The alternative proposition is in essence a slave proposition.
And spare me your objections that the current legislation(s) in DC don’t establish a “government takeover of healthcare.” We know this is viewed as a necessary intermediate step to the single-payer desired endgame. How do we know? Because he told us.
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