Why Universal Health Care Is Consistent with Minimal Government

[ncarraway]

I'm sensitive to arguments that government should be small; that it should protect individual freedoms rather than supporting institutions; that the best policy is often for governments to remain uninvolved unless they're protecting their constituency from outside forces (and not from ourselves). I'm especially sympathetic to this notion because of

Comments

[myopian8]

No, I agree pretty much completely. It confuses people sometimes that I espouse both small governments and universal health care.

But that's what the government is there to do: to protect you, be it from invading germs or Germans.

That said, I think if there were a system to forbid the coverage of people who smoke and get lung cancer (and so on), we'd have a similar coverage problem that we do now, where health insurance companies work the loopholes in the system to avoid covering people and keep costs low. Yeah, okay, we'd have to pay more to keep these people alive, but many of these lines are fuzzy. Smoking makes you more likely to get cancer; it doesn't guarantee it, just like eating tons of red meat makes it more likely that you'll have a heart attack. Should we not cover people who like steaks? What about people who don't exercise or who eat a lot of sugar? What about someone who drinks only very occasionally- should we cover them if they end up with liver cancer? Everyone can be accused of not keeping fit enough in some way.

[grenadier32]

Or pregnancy. There's one to bake your noodle. (For that matter, it is in fact considered a pre-existing condition in some circumstances.)

[deathwatchlove]

Well, being a woman is a pre-existing condition. That's why it's okay to beat your wife.

[myopian8]

I appreciate you, Nicole.

[grenadier32]

Now, this raises another question: if we accept that the government's obligation is to protect people from outside threats, how does that tie into the issue of being underinsured? Does the government have a responsibility to obligate private insurers to provide a minimum baseline of coverage? Or do people have the right to harm themselves by being tricked into a bad policy? (Forgive my militant rhetoric, but that really does happen, and it's an issue that has to be dealt with here.)

For that matter, does this mean the government has an obligation to provide insurance to everyone, or merely make sure it's available to everyone, possibly through other entities? And should it force people to be insured?

[deathwatchlove]

re: bareback Russion roulette - "They see HIV as a special way to further bond their relationship with their lover." what the fuck? I love bonding over life-threatening illnesses!

[samjolnir]

America's health system makes about as much sense to me as having the chief of your local fire department come up to you after saving your loved ones from your burning house and ask the question, "Cash, check, or credit?"

Anyone who doesn't believe that universal health care is a human right is either irreparably selfish or irreparably stupid.

[rindi]

See my comment below: Yes, perhaps I am selfish. But selfish does not necessarily imply self-centered. I may want the government to decide things for me because my life belongs to me, not to them, but that does not mean that I don't care about other fellow human beings or that I won't spend energy helping them.

[rindi]

The Constitution is a document of negative rights. Yes, many people are bad at knowing what they want, what they will enjoy, and what's good for them. So what, no one can know all the relevant information (and let's not exclude the government from this category). For now, no one is any better a choice for someone to make decisions for other people than anyone else. I'm glad we agree on that point.

But negative rights are rights to be left alone. They are rights not to be subject to an action of another human being. It says nothing about disease.

Being endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is not the same as saying that the government's job is to protect us from everything that may harm or attack us. The military and the police are designed to protect us from people (countries, fellow citizens) who don't want to leave us alone (how well they do that job is a subject for another discussion). I don't see how it follows that the government is then also justified in

[samjolnir]

You won't trust the government with determining what's right for people's health, that's understandable. Government bureaucracy is an over-bloated and frightening beast, we can all agree on that. But do you trust a group of crooked businessmen out to make a hefty profit off of other people's suffering with determining what's right for people's health?

[rindi]

Give me concrete facts on how much determining what's right these businessmen do and then I'll argue.

I'll note that the profit margin isn't the biggest issue (see the third comment to that article in particular, and googling the topic brings up a pile of articles on the same thing); and some organizations are even nonprofits (which, granted, can still pay high salaries). I agree that the US health care system is not the best out there. There are very many ways that it could be improved. But I'm not convinced that the current universal health care bill will improve anything.

(And hey, it takes an X Prize to motivate some people to improve health care.)

[ncarraway]

Ok, here we go. The reason I made this post, by the way, is that until I had this idea a few weeks ago, I'd been struggling with a real crisis of politic. I like the idea of universal health care, but is it justified? (Sorry, Finer, but I can't accept it without investigating its premises.) When this occurred to me, I meant to post it; the link in your post reminded me