From today's Washington Times, professor of economics at George Mason University Walter E. Williams on liberty, socialism and the ethics of forcing people to contribute towards the healthcare of others:
I bring this to your attention not because of any affection for the argument but out of admiration for William's boldness in making it. For me, the simple fact of some 40m US citizens without any healthcare suggests his argument is far too simplistic and of questionable ethics itself - but the fact that in the US they have an open and honest debate on healthcare and are prepared to engage in these moral questions around socialised medicine is no bad thing. Our reverence for the NHS and the principle of 'state-funded healthcare for all' sometimes obscures decent argument and debate about its future. And it's something that demographics alone will, in time, call into question anyway.
"...if a particular behavior or lifestyle imposes costs on others through tax-supported health care [some suggest the] government had a right to intercede. Similar justification was used for laws requiring helmets for motorcyclists and bicyclists. After all, if one exercises his liberty to ride without a helmet and has an accident and becomes a vegetable, society must bear the expense of taking care of him. The fact that an obese person becomes ill, or a cyclist has an accident, and becomes a burden on taxpayers who must bear the expense of taking care of him, is not a problem of liberty. It's a problem of socialism where one person is forced to take care of another. There is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another.
Forcing one person to bear the burden of health care costs for another is not only a moral question but a major threat to personal liberty. Think about all the behaviors and lifestyles that can lead to illness and increase the burden on taxpayers. A daily salt intake exceeding 6 grams can lead to hypertension. A high-fat diet and high alcohol intake can also lead to diabetes. A sedentary lifestyle can lead to several costly diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and heart failure. There are many other behaviors that lead to a greater health care burden, but my question is how much control over your life you are willing to give government in the name of reducing these costs? Would you want government to regulate how much salt you use? What about government deciding how much fat and alcohol you consume? There are immense beneficial health effects of a daily 30-minute aerobic exercise. Would you support government-mandated exercise?
You might argue that it's none of government's business how much fat, salt or alcohol a person consumes, even if it has adverse health care cost implications. I would ask: Wouldn't the same reasoning apply to helmet laws and proposed obesity laws?"
I bring this to your attention not because of any affection for the argument but out of admiration for William's boldness in making it. For me, the simple fact of some 40m US citizens without any healthcare suggests his argument is far too simplistic and of questionable ethics itself - but the fact that in the US they have an open and honest debate on healthcare and are prepared to engage in these moral questions around socialised medicine is no bad thing. Our reverence for the NHS and the principle of 'state-funded healthcare for all' sometimes obscures decent argument and debate about its future. And it's something that demographics alone will, in time, call into question anyway.
6 Comments:
forcing people to pay (for examples) for an environmental health service, road maintenance, clean water, a police force or the armed services could also, by a simple-minded soul, be described as "major threats to personal liberty".
You could, I think, make an argument that those things are different - no-one can 'pay for their own' armed forces or road maintenance, by their nature they have to be collective endeavours. The same isn't necessarily true of education or healthcare and I think that would be the thrust of Williams' point.
Still, even being on the centre-right I balk at the idea of a healthcare system as inadequate as the US one.
Nice to know you still 'drop in' Brian and your own blog is sorely missed....
'environmental health service,'...I wonder what that is or do we put the word enviromental in at random now?
It has become increasingly clear that state control of health is a lever for attacking choice of lifestyle as well as choices that are made with the taxed money removed. It is also clear that free health care is unsupportable.
Roads and the army and Police occupy a tiny proportion of ther tax cake.
I wonder if vouchers for health Insurance are the way forward. Vouchers in education were tried on a few occassions and sniffed at but now we have shed some of that collectivist mumbo jumbo it is on the agenda ..says rumour , ..even in Labour certainly for Conservatives. Such a scheme would have an immediate effect on lifestyle but without reducing fee men and women to battery chickens. Obviously it would be vastly more cost effective than the Public sector behemoth we are lumbered with.
I guess newmania would be blissfully happy were no one checking that the food he purchased wasn't poisonous and butchers etc. were free from pesky red-tape? Let's go back to the good old days when men were free and life expectancy for most was about 35 eh?!
btw life expectancy is now lower in the US than the EU and American people are, on average, shorter than Europeans. Both these are a reversal of how things were when I was a lad in the 1950s - there are many causes but poor health services (even though they pay far more of their per head GDP on health) play their part...
PS - I'd be quite happy to mend the road outside my house but few people would want to drive over it if I did!
Newmania - we use it at random now.
Life expectancy at birth is slightly lower in the US but this may well be due to their relative affluence as well as relative freedom to dispose of their income and lives as they choose. Perhaps this accounts for the vibrant culture and enormously greater happiness recorded than in the miserable UK.
They are , on a per capita basis about 20% richer and 30% are obese as opposed to our 23%. This might be the reasons together with a myriad of lifestyle and affluence related health problems Nonetheless spending on health as a percentage of GDP is much higher in the US than it is in the UK at 15.3% to our measly 8.3%. The US remains the most competitive economy in the world .
Your wish to snipe at the free world , the true motive behind you wish to remove democratic rights to Brussels have lead you to simplify what is a rather more complex picture .Interestingly while the UK performs conspicuously well on life expectancy we are poor on other indicators like low birth rates although only slightly worse than the US itself a poor performer.
On the value we get from people checking foods , and the rest of the elf and safety encrustation ,improvements have come from the threat of legal action and the increased ability to use the courts . That is also the case for health and Safety where the legal climate and insurance costs are the true drivers of improvement and regulations easily circumvented in hazardous occupations …(no doubt in the endless office sin which people waste our money they are rigorously applied ..on building sites …no.).Of course the ability and will people have to protect themselves is sapped by the state creche and the sheer removal of choice to spend .
I think one has to admit that with freedom risks must be dealt with and the ”Outcomes “ are not everything though , especially given the vacuous homogenised life the EU prefers for its ‘citizens ‘. Not everything is amenable to “rational “thought soi disant. It is not unlikely that we would be, better off saving the entire paraphernalia of Parliament and Elections and simply agree to be ruled by the Continent . I suspect they would do a pretty good job on outcomes .This might please you but I would be strangely dissatisfied considering the safety and insulation from worrying decisions from which our elite had thoughtfully protected me . Actually …why not just not bother fighting the Second World War.I expect the trains would be running better.
I loathe your soulless future HV even if one did admire Europe , which I sometimes do . No-one is suggesting the US makes 80 % of our laws and precedes the primacy of Parliament . This means we can be a bit more al a carte about the good and bad on offer.
As I live near the A 27 I would be happy if anyone mended the road whithin say the next year....
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