Health Care Should Reflect Our Dignity

The health care debate has become a farce. As the various proposals for reform have taken shape, a backlash has swelled. Democrats are retreating into a familiar pattern of denial and condescension. And all of the proposals worthy of consideration are apparently off the table. The best we might hope for is that our "leaders" will pass a nothing bill and declare victory.

The swing in public opinion is to be expected. The most noteworthy proposal for reform has been Obama's "public option" (or "co-op", or whatever code word we're using today). Now, economics tells us that any government-funded "option" will quickly wipe out its private competition. I presume that most reformers know this. (Bad faith, anyone?) A government takeover of any industry is usually a mistake, but, in health care, the potential for catastrophe runs high.

When we completely replace our admittedly dysfunctional quasi-private system (Can we please stop pretending that we have a free market system? Shikha Dalmia debunks that here.) with a government monopoly, life itself will be devalued. Why? Because, when health costs are funded by taxpayers and rationed by civil servants, the temptation will be to move toward a British NICE model for cost containment. Care will go to the "best investments." Those deemed poor investments become soylent green.

Of course, the left is coming out in force to denounce the "craziness" of anyone who sees this for what it is. Rachel Maddow pedantically explains (in what I take is her typical blowtorch to a straw man fashion) that the purpose of health care reform isn't to kill old people. Of course not. Cost containment is. Euthanasia will just be a side effect. Is it any coincidence that this model is advocated by eugenicists like Peter Singer? (For the uninitiated, Singer believes in post-birth abortions.)

Surely there must be a better way. Dr Atul Gawande's recent article in the New Yorker points to innovative solutions like the Mayo Clinic model of health care. He makes a strong case, and his insights are largely correct. First, though, I suspect that incentives will have to be realigned in a truly free market. This means moderating our reliance on insurance and government programs to a more healthy and sustainable level. As of now, health insurance is heavily regulated, preventing anything like a free market in healthcare to operate. Without the courage to shoulder our own costs, we will never know the daring innovation that we're capable of.

If we can harness the power of markets to find ways to bring down costs to a more manageable level, then we can afford to provide a better level of care to those in need,. In large part, this will be because fewer people will be in need when care is more affordable. Instead of condemning all people to the same low standard of care, we can provide a baseline of minimal care. Such a system would respect our dignity as individuals in a way that socialism emphatically does not.

Socialism engenders zero-sum thinking, and thus commoditization. Markets have always been the engine of true progress, and thus better express the transcendent value of human life. We may not have infinite resources to treat people, and we all have to die one day, of course, but innovation promises a constant striving for something better. Obamacare won't provide this. I say, let Joseph Stiglitz and the Europeans keep their stabilizers. What American health care needs is an earthquake.