Health care slaves? “Public goods” versus private exchange

onservative public policy is often attacked because it fails to “fix” human nature. But liberal public policy usually fails because it ignores human nature. A conversation I had at a business law conference I attended two weeks ago drove this point home to me anew.

Having served on a well-attended panel entitled “Conservatism in Academe,” early on in the conference, I was fair game for anyone wanting to challenge conservative principles and policies. Later in the week, a colleague chatting with me over cocktails tried to defend single-payer health care. “I believe in having a civil society,” she explained pleasantly, “and in a civil society, I think health care should be a ‘public good.’”

Saying that health care is a “public good” sounds wonderful – the kind of statement with which no intelligent and compassionate person could disagree. But, as with so many blanket statements made by liberals, it does not hold up under scrutiny, and in fact the infrastructure necessary to deliver on such an apparently compassionate policy inevitably results in disappointment, failure, and – if the latter is not acknowledged – oppression by the very government it was hoped would be the solution to all human ills. Why is this so? Three basic reasons, all inarguable:

A “public good” ought to be something that everyone needs access to, but no one should own, like air or water. Although human beings might unlawfully pollute or otherwise make these public goods unavailable or unusable for their fellow creatures, humans did not create nor do they own these things, which preexisted us.

Unlike air or water, “health care” does not exist in the absence of another human being’s endeavors. If someone decides to be a nurse, a pediatrician, an oncologist, or a neurosurgeon, he will spend (or borrow) the money, and devote months and years of study to acquire the necessary expertise. Someone else could get an engineering degree and invent a new stent, an MRI technology, a CT scan machine, or ultrasound. Still another could pursue her education in chemistry, and develop a compound that eventually becomes drug therapy for cancer, autism, diabetes, hypertension, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Groups of people get together, raise the necessary funds, and build offices, clinics, and hospitals. Multiply this activity by hundreds of thousands of people over decades, and you have a health care “system.” (Although even the term “system” is a misnomer here, since there is no single unifying power behind the development or delivery of the care). But none of these goods or services would exist without human beings’ creating, building, or deciding to deliver them.

To say that “health care” is a “public good” is to say that everyone has an equal right to these people’s time, their efforts, their energy; the services they choose to deliver, or the things they have devoted their lives’ work to developing. The unfairness of this assessment and the impossibility of its implementation is surely obvious: none of us “owns” anyone else’s time or creativity, and none of us have the right to demand free access to it. To claim otherwise is a form of indentured servitude. A free society depends upon free exchange: we request goods or services that another provides, and we must offer something that person views as having equal value. Which brings us to the second point.

2. If people think it is “free,” they will demand more of it than can be provided.

Characterizing health care as a “public good” is another way of saying that demand for it is potentially unlimited. This exposes the single largest flaw in the single-payer plans. Single-payer advocates like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank ignore human nature, and then hide behind their intentions when human nature rears its head: “We don’t have any intention of ‘rationing’ health care,” they claim. OK, let’s assume they don’t. But it won’t be their “intentions” that cause it to be rationed; it will be the fact that everyone will want more of it than they can have, because they have been told that it is their “right,” and that it is “free.”

A simple analogy should demonstrate this. Food is even more essential to human existence than health care, and yet we don’t argue that we have a “right” to “free” food. If your local supermarket was ordered to announce “Free food today!” would people casually stroll over and pick up a few items they needed? More likely, there would be a run on the store that would empty the shelves within minutes. Imagine that happening at every store, every day. How long could that system last?

The only thing tempering insatiable human demand is the fact that the person providing the wanted item expects something of value in exchange – usually money. As much as liberals love to denounce the profit motive, it is precisely the insistence upon an exchange of value that keeps what would otherwise be limitless human demand in check.

Government purports to be “above” mere money-grubbing profit motives, and people assume this is an improvement. But it is actually the problem. Government “income” from tax dollars is not unlimited, despite perception to the contrary. Yet history is replete with instances of entities charging the government more than they would if they were billing a private entity. (Medicare fraud, anyone? Or perhaps you remember $500 toilet seats?) In point of fact, the costs of the goods and services after the government decides to provide them will be pretty much what they were before the government took over. Only now, the customers/recipients/patients think that they no longer have to pay for them. Without the checks and balances inherent in the “my-wants-versus-your-profit-motive” dynamic, demand will skyrocket, supplies will shrink, and shortages will occur. Why must supplies shrink? Because the government cannot command doctors to work more than 24 hours in a day. It cannot command that complex surgeries take less time. It cannot command the chemical reactions in pharmaceutical manufacturing to occur faster. All it can do is ration what there is.

If demand for health care is limitless, governments’ pursuit of absurd and impossible results, seemingly, is not. And that pursuit has been the cause of untold misery. It is a very small step from saying that “health care is a ‘public good’” to saying that “equal quality health care is a ‘public good.’” After all, if I have a “right” to neurosurgery, then do I not also have a right to neurosurgery that is as good as that which someone in Los Angeles, Cleveland or Boston would get?

This, too, is untenable. Human beings may be “created equal” in the eyes of God, but they are certainly not created equal in terms of talent, skill, acuity, tenacity, or ability. The government cannot say, “Surgeon X must be of equal quality and skill as Surgeon Y.” Plenty - like the former Soviet Union, Cambodia, China and Cuba (note the pattern there) - have tried and failed. More recently, countries like Sweden have actually forbidden the private purchase of health care that is not paid for by the government, arguing that for some to get “better” care simply because they can afford to pay for it, is “unequal.”

The primary problem with the delivery of health care in this country is not the model of private exchange, it is a cost structure that is making it increasingly difficult for the average American to pay for the care they receive. The correct model of reform is one that addresses unnecessary costs, not one that takes our most talented, productive and needed citizens, and makes them – and us – slaves to an unworkable and ultimately doomed government health care system.

That's one thing the Founders did not do. They took into account human nature, the history of civilization, and their own desire for true liberty. That's why they structured a Constitution to strictly limit, balance, and separate any powers they would grant to their government.

Today, we need to relearn their principles if liberty is to survive.

As I posted elsewhere, those who engage in the current battle, must elevate the debate to the point where the media cannot distort it as being just "ignorance" (as Katie Couric claimed yesterday). The Gibbs and Axelrod talking points cannot trump the forcefulness and truth of the words of America's Founders on liberty vs. tyranny.

Edmund Burke, before the British Parliament way back in March 1775, observed the colonists' fierce "spirit of liberty." He said:

"In other countries the people . . . judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle." He said Americans could detect "misgovernment at a distance and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."

James Madison put it this way, "The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much, soo to forget it."

Any Republicans or Democrats who "compromise" for the sake of popularity now on this important principle involving future generations should be recalled at the next election cycle!

This is not about a frivolous question of which provisions are acceptable and which are unacceptable. This is about a power struggle between the principles the founding generation were willing to stake their "lives, property, and sacred honor" for, and those who, throughout the history of civilization have arrogated unto themselves power over other people's lives.

The current "issue" called "health care reform," or its equally obnoxious semantic twin "health insurance reform," is just the invasion of liberty by arrogant elected officials which has finally aroused citizens who, heretofore, ignored the decades-long power grab by those who were supposed to protect "We, the People's" constitutional principles.

Now, citizens are seeing that it is a matter of "principle," not an issue of semantics over wording.

They should not allow their elected representatives to be coopted by "blue dogs" or any other "wolf in sheep's clothing" that would allow what may turn out to be the most important watershed moment in the history of American liberty to be further threatened. Now, Conrad and Sebelius, and others, sensing the voter mood are throwing out "compromise" talk this weekend, all to punt for better position down the road. Seize the moment for the sake of posterity and just say, "no"!

A word from the author of our Declaration of Independence regarding citizens and oppressive government might give some backbone to today's citizens:

"The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate . . . the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that they may. . . know ambition under all its shapes, and . . . exert their natural power to defeat its purposes." - Thomas Jefferson

And, for more wisdom from the same source:

" . . . this is a tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers. . . have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follws that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression."- Thomas Jefferson

We need citizens in the 8th District of Florida (Orlando) to attend Town Hall Meeting with Alan Grayson TONIGHT!

I've been asking Alan Grayson’s office (8th District of Florida - Orlando) for weeks if and when he will hold a Town Hall meeting here in his district. I kept getting “We plan to have one, but we're not sure when and where - it will probably be the very last week of August. Watch the website for news on this.”

Finally, posted at 6:00PM yesterday (Sunday) with only 24 hours notice, Alan Grayson’s web site has announced that the Town Hall here in Orlando will be held tonight (Monday) at 7:45PM at the local IBEW Union Hall. Here's the announcement:

ALAN GRAYSON
[8th Congressional District of Florida –Orlando]

TO HOST HEALTH CARE TOWN HALL
August 16, 2009 7:30 PM

From Grayson’s website:

Congressman Alan Grayson will host a town hall meeting to discuss the need for health care reform, listen to concerns or answer questions from the constituents he serves, and debunk the many myths being circulated about the current proposals.
WHAT: Health Care Town Hall
WHEN: Monday, August 17, 2009, 7:45 p.m.
WHERE: IBEW Local 606 Union Hall
820 Virginia Drive
Orlando, FL
The Congressman intends for and expects this event to be a respectful and productive discussion.
This is the second public health care meeting the Congressman has held during the summer district work period. On July 27th, he met with about fifty members of his Health Care Advisory Board. The meeting was announced 72 hours in advance, open to the public, and promoted and covered by multiple media outlets.
The Congressman also will conduct a health care telephone town hall on Thursday, August 20th at 7 p.m. People interested in being a part of that event can sign up on the Congressman’s website.

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