First post here,
I was in an argument with my father and grandfather about free market healthcare and I simply didn't have the knowledge to persuade them and I'm now coming to you guys for help. Any links or books would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you. Those are the words I could not seem to come up with that night.
This has been said many times in various ways, but I want to make it really clear. Support of national health care is based on a very simple economic fallacy; the belief that lack of health care is caused by lack of "ability to pay", not lack of physical stuff. People notice that they can't get something because they can't pay for it, so they believe that having to pay for it is the reason there's scarcity. Thus they believe when you take away the need to pay for it, it will simply be available in unlimited quantity. They implicitly believe that it is possible to create a free lunch out of thin air by making stuff "free". Most people now understand that this is nonsense when talking about cars or computers, but somehow they still think it's possible with health care, because health care is not a good but a class of goods and therefore people don't intuitively consider it scarce.
When arguing with people, you have to hammer the point that health care is scarce. Requiring people to pay for it is a necessary allocation mechanism. And if it wasn't, then why should we rely on monetary allocation mechanisms for cars and computers?
Do people shop around when they need their car fixed after an accident? Their objection assumes people can't plan...
Their argument is that when you are laying on the ground dying and have to have surgery immediately you can't exactly find the best cheap to quality ratio in a doctor, you just get the surgery.
And if the doctors don't want to perform it? You enslave them?
Who said anything about enslaving doctors?
His argument is "a guy is dying! Quick, save him! It's all that matters!"
Apply the same logic to a situation where no one wants to help him - do we then enslave the doctors to make them help him?
Also his point about "who can shop around for a doctor when you need a surgery?" kind of misses the point. Even if it doesn't miss the point, how long does it take to find a well-reviewed doctor on the internet? But don't bother granting that, the point is that when consumers shop around, scrutiny is placed on service-providers. When scrutiny is placed on service-providers they must jockey to attract customers. Thus, even without selecting the optimal insurer/surgeon, the customer still benefits because the trend of free-competition is to improve service across the board.
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
Did Hyptothetical "IM DYING RIGHT NOW" Dude plan in advance for a Hypothetical Market Insurance Plan to prevent these things from happening? Why should I Hyptothetically care if he didn't and failed to be responsible? And if I don't care, do they really think a co-op style, defacto 'public' Hypothetical Emergency Medical service that would care for these irresponsible people (and that I could call if I encountered such a Hypothetical Man) wouldn't exist in an open market?
Then that just goes back to this weird 'charities won't exist in a free market' fear that a lot of people have.
This is precisely why I came to you guys for answers. Thanks!
Let us know how it works out!
I will! It won't be for a month or two because I live about 4 hours away from them, but I may be able to convince my father over email.
This is a great video on healthcare pre welfare state:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKenWu6gLMg