The other day, Peter Singer quoted me in his New York Times piece, Why We Must Ration Health Care:
In the conservative monthly The American Spectator, David Catron … asked whether we really deserve a health care system in which ’soulless bureaucrats arbitrarily put a dollar value on our lives.’
For anyone familiar with Singer’s positions, which include the advocacy of infanticide in certain situations, it will come as no surprise that his answer to my question is “yes.”
The task of health care bureaucrats is then to get the best value for the resources they have been allocated. It is the familiar comparative exercise of getting the most bang for your buck.
This assertion is an excellent argument for not giving those bureaucrats our bucks. It also highlights what Singer and other advocates of government-run health care mean by “we.”
When these people say we need to do something, what they really mean is the state needs to do something to us, like creating inefficiencies in the health care system or wrecking the health insurance industry.
Comments 4
I’ll break my silence to thank you for drawing my attention to Singer’s excellent article. I guess I won’t get a coherent response from you but what have you got against having everyone covered for the current gold standard of evidence-based care (which millions don’t have now) and also being able to insure for every last minute experimental intervention on your death bed, if you so wish? Or put it another way, do you really see all Americans covered for absolutely everything in a truly free market and how?
Posted 21 Jul 2009 at 4:33 pm ¶Good to hear from you, Marc.
No, I don’t see all Americans covered for absolutely everything in a truly free market.
In a truly free market, everyone would be able to buy the coverage he/she needs at a reasonable price. Different people would buy different policies with different benefits.
And they would manage their health care purchases like they manage their clothing and cell phone and computer and car and beer and TV purchases.
Posted 21 Jul 2009 at 8:49 pm ¶Singer writes: “The task of health care bureaucrats is then to get the best value for the resources they have been allocated. It is the familiar comparative exercise of getting the most bang for your buck.”
Indeed. Bureaucrats will get the best value for *themselves* with our tax dollars. Not the best value for patients who earn the money the bureaucrats would spend. Is Singer familiar with Public Choice economics?
Posted 22 Jul 2009 at 12:01 am ¶‘everyone would be able to buy the coverage he/she needs at a reasonable price.’
That’s called universal coverage under progressive taxation, as everyone needs the same gold standard of care. Of course, what you’re conceding is that under your ideal many millions of Americans would never be able to afford say state of the art cancer care because the ‘free market’ would never supply that to the poor at a low enough cost.
Posted 22 Jul 2009 at 1:18 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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