Ian Linker’s opinion piece (“A Republican plan for real reform to health care,” op-ed, Sept. 8) manages to make absolutely clear what is wrong with health care in America and the Republican plan to fix it.
He uses such terms as “competition,” “industries,” “consumers” and “pricing.” Linker demonstrates that health care in America is first about profit. Sorry, but the primary purpose of health care should be health, not money.
There is a very simple fix. Try any one of the many successful health care systems around the world that focus on quality care for all, rather than making a few people rich.
What does it mean that "the primary purpose of health care should be health, not money?" Just what does Marvin Schwalb think money stands for?
Money stands for man-made goods and services, including healthcare, created by productive individuals. It is a means of trading one's own productive efforts in payment for what others produce. If healthcare is not about money, it is about something-for-nothing. It is about enslaving providers to the whims of those who do not think that they should have to pay their own way.
A profit is the reward for successfully providing a product or service to willing "consumers"--in actuality, other producers--at a cost below that which consumers are willing and able to pay (the market price) in a voluntary trade. Trade is a win-win transaction in which both parties benefit. Can anyone think of anything more noble than making a profit curing or alleviating people's health problems, or reducing their suffering? Those who get rich in this fashion are moral heroes, because the money they are paid is the measure of the value others place on their work. And given the voluntary nature of trade, the profit motive leads to better quality and lower prices. Government-run healthcare, based as it is on forced confiscation of private money (i.e., theft) eliminates the profit discipline, leading to the out-of-control costs and rationing that beset those immoral "successful health care systems around the world."
Of course, that's how it works in a free market where trade is voluntary, rather than coerced as it is in today's government-controlled medicine. One must readily acknowledge that a lot--but certainly not all--of the profits earned in today's mixed economy come as a result of government favors--as in the insurance mandates which are subsidies to insurance companies--and it's not always easy to separate the too.
That aside, the idea that there is some inherent conflict between healthcare and profits is utterly false. The two are inextricably linked and mutually supportive. Profits don't come at the expense of providing healthcare, as Schwalb implies. They are the result of providing healthcare. No profits, no healthcare. Healthcare, like any other productive field, should be about win-win, mutually profitable trade, not one-sided gain for patients at the expense of providers. It is just as moral for providers to monetarily profit from their services as it is for patients to profit through better health from those very services. It is just as immoral to deny providers' legitimate profits as it is to deny healthcare to patients by government dictate.
Further, despite Schwalb's ridicule of the terms “competition,” “industries,” “consumers” and “pricing,” wishing away the laws of economics can no more negate them than wishing away the laws of gravity can negate them. The higher objective value of healthcare relative to many other products is irrelevant. Healthcare is a man-made product, and providers are traders, just like producers in every other line of work.
In a free market, the "health care system"--i.e., the government--doesn't "focus on quality care for all," "making a few people rich," or anything of the kind. Rather, it focuses only on protecting the rights of providers and patients to voluntarily contract with each other to mutual advantage. Money is the tool of freedom and peaceful coexistence among people.
Parasites and power-lusters always seek to ideologically disconnect wealth from money in order to loot and enslave the productive for the parasites own unearned benefit and as justification for expanding government controls.
Related Reading:
"The Forgotten Man of Socialized Medicine"--and us
Time to Minimize "Macroeconomics"
Francisco's Money Speech
OBushonomics vs. Gilliganomics
No comments:
Post a Comment