While my passions run in artistic circles, I have studied extensively as an Austrian School economist. The following thoughts below the links are my own, but are echoed and supported by many who make this their primary study and passion.
The issue of healthcare, especially today's push of socialized healthcare through even more coercion by governments, is one that definitely affects everyone's life, liberty and property—or simply put, life energy. Primarily this is a moral issue. There is no need for data or statistics. It can be discussed intelligently and consistently by everyone, as moral principles are universal
I have provided here some links to which I hope you find informative. Most are from the Foundation for Economic Education, the oldest and perhaps the most respected institution dedicated to the advancement of liberty.
The case or argument against nationalized, socialized government-run healthcare—however you want to call it—can ultimately be won only on moral grounds. Attempts to cite statistics and comparative empirical analyses will, at best, prove frustrating, and tend to send you off on tangents and diversions from the focus.
All Human activity toward the solutions to problems and the achievement of ends must ultimately involve spontaneous creative energy to be effective. While coercion in any form—or the threat of it—can temporarily halt destructive actions, it can never be employed successfully to direct, manage, or encourage creative energy toward the goal of solutions and achievements. Rather, by its nature, coercion will only produce undesired and unfavorable incentives on which people will act to improve their positions and situation. Governments and their bureaucracies are examples of this coercion.
In a discussion, it is important to establish priorities, simply as we must choose our own battles, and not waste time on people who are not open to civil discussions.
So to establish this, begin as follows:
1. “I understand that you are in favor of socialized healthcare. I respect your right to believe in it, and support it, and act according to your beliefs without coercion being used against your beliefs or actions, as long as they are civil, voluntary, and do not use violence against others.”
2. “I am not in favor of socialized healthcare. Do you likewise give me the same respect and consideration to be against socialized healthcare and to act accordingly without coercion or violence used against me?”
At this point you have established whether or not to continue a discussion. If the other party agrees, then proceed with the discussion. If the other party disagrees, ten proceed to publicly admonish them: “Then you have already chosen to put a gun to my head, and peaceful discussion is not possible. You have already chosen to the use of violence that has been proven never to work towards solving problems. Since you are unwilling to participate in a peaceful debate over ideas—since you are holding the gun—you ultimately lose that debate by default, and I will not participate in such immoral activity!”
Done. Move on; and at the same time, you will have left that person with a moral question to be worked out.
The foundations of morality have two basic principles:
1. Regarding morality, nothing exists except individual people. There are no groups or collectives to speak of that have any meaning here. Only individuals act, and only in their actions can a question of morality be raised.
2. What is good for one person must be good for everyone. Conversely, what is bad for one person to do must be bad for everyone to do.
If the government should not determine what you are paid for what you do and how you do it, then it should not determine what a doctor—or any of the doctor’s associates—is paid or how they do their jobs.
Healthcare is not a right. A right is a claim against someone else. Moreover, it is a claim that does not require the taking from another person. Only by this meaning do the concepts of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness make sense.
Just as we do not have a right to happiness—we have rather a right to its pursuit, That pursuit must be a moral pursuit, involving voluntary exchange and contract, not by coercion or its threat. The means by which we have found to pursue any happiness in a peaceful way has been through the voluntary exchange process that we call the market. A free market is one that is free from coercion by any individuals, regardless whether they wear fine hats or uniforms. Such a process has never been achieved, and barely approximated only at times when governments have been severely limited—limited to protecting equally life, liberty, property and the enforcement only of voluntary contracts. Any coercion beyond those limits produces governments that become the legal plunderers.
A free market in healthcare means that individuals are allowed the choice of and responsibility for their own doctors, and their own insurance—and that includes the choice and responsibility of opting out of any system.
The fear of insecurity of healthcare is founded only in healthcare by force, decreed by governments. Healthcare is not a right; it is a commodity. It is something that can be purchased and sold. That means that individuals have the natural tendency to compete with one another to discover the best ways to meet this important need. In a freed market of healthcare, the natural incentives of competition bring down costs and prices, while always bringing the best creativity forward toward better medicine, better care, and newer and better to approach it. It has always been this way in markets when they were allowed to operate in the miraculous discovery process that they are.
The discussion about healthcare needs to property focus not upon whose head we ought to point the gun to for better care, lower prices, shorter waiting times, more options, and better incentives to take responsible care of ourselves. The focus need to turn to find in what areas there is already a gun at the head, and remove it anywhere it is found where individuals would contract voluntarily. The two things that make a market work are the wide dispersal of knowledge, wisdom and information on the planet, and the liberty which allows the creative energy to combine this information in ways that no single individual can conceive or comprehend. The market is not perfect, and the making of mistakes is the natural consequence of being human. However responsible individuals making mistakes, learning and adjusting from natural consequences, evolve the market faster and involve fewer undesirable, unexpected and unintended consequences than do mistakes make at a central level where little or no access to that information is possible by people who cannot be held responsible.
I have attempted in a short period of time to collect some good links above to what I believe are some of the best ideas and insights about this in order to steer the discussion along the proper and moral tracks.
Links to ideas and insights regarding the market in general and healthcare specifically:
In General:
"If Men Were Free to Try" by John C. Sparks. This is a short essay that illustrates the miraculous nature of the market—when left free to succeed without interference.
"I, Pencil" by Leonard E. Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (www.fee.org) . This, his most famous essay, is perhaps the greatest presentation of what markets are all about, and what they mean to liberty.
"From Small Beginnings: The Road to Genocide" by by James A. Maccaro. To those who would say "It could never happen in America": Please understand that people act according to the incentives presented to them. What became frightening with doctors in Nazi Germany was not a "German" thing. It was the natural result of perverted incentives that were created when citizens allowed the power of the gun to meddle in the practice of medicine.
"The Myth of Health Insurance" by Dr. Thomas Szasz. Here Dr. Szasz makes the case that "what we call 'health insurance' has little to do with health and nothing to do with insurance."
"Your Money and Your Life: The Price of Universal Health Care" Dr. Jane Orient sheds more light on the issue of relinquishing your life energies for the sham and scam of forced healthcare.
"A Four-Step Health-Care Solution" by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. Here is a good explanation of a free-market approach to healthcare. There's a lot of work to be done, folks. But if you are here, there is always optimism.
A video link about a Canadian woman who had a brain tumor. When you watch this, think about the incentives that are created when coercion rather than competition plays the major role in the healthcare industry. It's the first news story after the commercial.
