I agree, they shouldn’t be conflated.
There’s two issues involved in the user pays theory, one’s the moral (not my brother’s keeper) concept, the other’s public health. Most of the plagues that historically wiped out civilizations every century or so were related to large numbers of the afflicted and contagious spreading the disease to the healthy population. The foundation of that was lack of treatment for the vectors. If the proper concept of taxes is that they should only be used to buy things that are beneficial to us that we can’t afford to buy on our own, I’d have to put knowing I’m unlikely to get TB from that guy next to me with the cough in the category of something I don’t mind paying a little bit for.
So I guess I’d say I’m a semi-libertarian on that issue.
Ah, yes, the ‘public health’. “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.”
I’ll stick w/ the moral side of that argument; the govt does sh!t on the latter.
For example: allowing the flood of illegals/’refugees’/etc. that have RE-INTRODUCED TB and a plethora of previously eradicated ills\diseases...for political gain.
A few years ago, not only did they NOT protect the Citizenry (IE: ‘public health’) by KEEPING people out, they flew the infected INTO our Country; not treating ‘em at the vector sector. The CDC couldn’t even stay out of the politics!
In each of these examples, not ONCE did I note the State give the ‘public health’ any more heed than Fedzilla.
How well does FEMA do during these ‘natural disasters’? Food/water/shelter mired in red-tape. Bureaucracy run amok, each little fiefdom fighting the own ‘game of thrones’...
If I thought, for one moment, govt would do the RIGHT thing (what it was ‘created’ to accomplish), you’d have a point and my support. The pandemic\epidemic comes, I have no doubt it will be by wilful negligence of our ‘protectors’; who will be the 1st ones to high-tail it to the nearest ‘safe zone’ w/ orders to shoot to kill any pleeb attempting sanctuary\support.