The Truth Has A Liberal Bias

Just last week I had a conversation with a so-called "friend" of mine on the topic of universal health care. Providing some background information, I write "friend" in quotations because this individual was more like a student government partner, with our collective work serving as Presidents of our respective constituents, which often overlapped. Basically, that was the extent of our relationship with each other.

This individual posted a link to a NY Times editorial advocating that in order to enact universal health care, a system of rationing must be implemented. He then advocated ethically indefensible statements, including "On that note, since when do we have the right to long or healthy life? The fact that we're living so long is a product of our scientific progress, medical advancement, and financial incentives" and "The free market has enabled us to experience a side of life which is unnatural... and now that we're convinced we're all entitled to 75+ years meandering about this planet we expect the government to nationalize it for us, otherwise scream human rights violations or make emotional anecdotal appeals based in personal experiences or social/racial 'injustices.'"

I called him out on his ethical presumptions, which he provided no moral basis for, and it ended up into this major debate. You can see the back and forth comments at my Daily Kos diary about the debate, "Rationing Health Care - my debate with an economic conservative".

Enter today, when Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman writes on his own blog why the free market solution cannot be applied to health care. His two main points are:

There are two strongly distinctive aspects of health care. One is that you don’t know when or whether you’ll need care — but if you do, the care can be extremely expensive. The big bucks are in triple coronary bypass surgery, not routine visits to the doctor’s office; and very, very few people can afford to pay major medical costs out of pocket.

This tells you right away that health care can’t be sold like bread. It must be largely paid for by some kind of insurance. And this in turn means that someone other than the patient ends up making decisions about what to buy. Consumer choice is nonsense when it comes to health care. And you can’t just trust insurance companies either — they’re not in business for their health, or yours.

**Snip**

The second thing about health care is that it’s complicated, and you can’t rely on experience or comparison shopping. (”I hear they’ve got a real deal on stents over at St. Mary’s!”) That’s why doctors are supposed to follow an ethical code, why we expect more from them than from bakers or grocery store owners.

Finally, Krugman concludes with this:

There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn’t work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.

The academic paper cited in Krugman's post is only nine pages long and, along with his short blog post, should be required reading for all members of Congress. It's a logically and economically sound why the solution to the health care crisis is not the free market. If anything from the current system - which is a free market for-profit system - can be gleaned, it is that it is a massive, unequivocal failure.