Health Care

The thing that pisses me off on the medical debate is that the conservative side of the argument is, intentionally or not, disingenuous. If I may take some broad strokes here:

• The liberal argument is that the government should at least help out, and perhaps even take over the health care system.
• The conservative argument is that the free market is the best solution.

I am not really hip to a socialized medical system. But the problem with the conservative argument is that it implies that we have a free market system in health care (which we don't), or that their solution would restore a free market system to health care (which it won't). We have a highly regulated health care system. "Free market" means you can sell anything I want to buy, and I can buy anything that you want to sell. But I can't buy my medical care from you, unless the government has (though various agencies and extra-governmental bodies) "approved" you. It doesn't really matter how good or knowledgeable you are as a surgeon, nor how much I trust you - you cannot practice your craft without the government saying you have met their credentials.

Crazier still, the federal government (in defiance of the tenth amendment) has the notion that it has the right to decide what substances you can and cannot put in your body for medical purposes, nutritional purposes, or entertainment purposes. And even if we were to accept that contention, the federal government goes on to make stupid decisions about it. Alcohol (dangerous to both individual and society) is legal, yet marijuana (relatively safe to both individual and society) is illegal. Even when states provide a legitimate approval of the use of marijuana for medical purposes, the federal government inexplicably threatens to step in and arrest people for using it.

It pisses me off, not that conservatives claim that the free market is the best path to the best health care, but that they appear to be completely ignorant of the fact that the free market does not control the health care industry. We can all find anecdotal evidence that the socialized systems of health care in all the pinko countries are useless, and everybody dies. We can also find anecdotal evidence that the socialized systems of health care in all the pinko countries work wonderfully, and no one ever dies. Interestingly, I don't know when I've heard anything other than the anecdotal "Sue-Anne had to wait over 300 years for a heart transplant in Canada, so she came to the US", vs "Auntie Mae couldn't afford to refill it here, so she went to Canada to get a cheap refill on Uncle Joe's Viagra prescription". To whatever extent any of the anecdotal evidence applies to the general case, it really doesn't matter. Because the conservative argument is a philosophical, not a pragmatic argument. The conservative argument is that the free market is the best way to get the best medicine. But if they refuse to unshackle the health care industry from the zillions of crazy regulations about who can buy what service or medicine from whom, then they have no right to simultaneously refuse to help people who have to pay the ridiculous costs of health care that are kept high because (among other reasons) the government restricts free trade in the industry.

My position is that if the government is going to restrict free trade in health care, it should pay for it, too. Private medicine in a free market just might work. Socialized medicine just might work (and from what I've seen of it, it does work pretty well for the vast majority of cases in Europe, despite the problems that do arise). But when the government provides "protection" for the business of health care, then leaves it to private financing, something is quite wrong.