Because conservatives like it:
I am a retired lifelong conservative Republican, planning to change my registration to Independent. Why? Because of obstructionist practices of the Republicans, such as Saturday night’s vote in the House. Only one Republican voted for the House Bill 3962. All the rest played strict partisan politics.
We need change in our broken health insurance system in America. The best change would be a switch to single-payer — but in the interest of making progress, I implore my Representative, Darrell Issa, to stop playing partisan politics.
I also implore my senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, to vote in favor of health care reform in the upcoming Senate votes. Again, single-payer is the best way to go, but any change from the present system will be welcome.
and libertarians like it:
By now I’m accustomed to being the only person in any given room with my particular set of cockamamie politics. But even within the more familiar confines of the libertarian movement, I am an awkward outlier on the topic of the day (and the topic of this issue of reason): health care.
To put it plainly, when free marketers warn that Democratic health care initiatives will make us more "like France," a big part of me says, "I wish." It’s not that I think it’s either feasible or advisable for the United States to adopt a single-payer, government-dominated system. But it’s instructive to confront the comparative advantages of one socialist system abroad to sharpen the arguments for more capitalism at home.
For a dozen years now I’ve led a dual life, spending more than 90 percent of my time and money in the U.S. while receiving 90 percent of my health care in my wife’s native France. On a personal level the comparison is no contest: I’ll take the French experience any day. ObamaCare opponents often warn that a new system will lead to long waiting times, mountains of paperwork, and less choice among doctors. Yet on all three of those counts the French system is significantly better, not worse, than what the U.S. has now.
so obviously it must be bad.
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I'm actually not sure that
I'm actually not sure that libertarians "like" it. At least, I'm not sure about the people who helped put up the 355 responses to it on reason.com where it was first posted.
Here's what Matt Welch says he would do:
they all hate it, actually
[cf fraser institute in canada for instance] because it conflicts with their political philosophy bigtime.
otoh, once they actually experience health care in a country that has either national health insurance or socialized medicine, especially if it's for something major, they realize how much worse the health care situation is here.
what they like is the result -- excellent care, affordable and available to everyone. what they absolutely cannot bring themselves to do is to admit, or even to realize, is that this is an industry that requires heavy-duty govt intervention -- thereby making it into a public good -- for it to succeed [measuring success from the patients' point of view]. they are surrounded by the empirical evidence, country after country, whether in europe or asia or north america, has gone to some degree of nationalization of either insurance or provision of care [or both] and has achieved superior results in this way. nowhere has 'the market' been able to deliver with anything like the efficiency and affordability of govt.
canada's system was the same as ours in the 1960s, but by 1970 [71? 72? 75?] they had completely switched to single payer and now 40 years later we can see the [positive] difference that change has made.
your individual liberty and autonomy are increased enormously if you're willing to pay a smidgen more in taxes in return for never having to worry about whether you can afford to get sick, or whether you can take care of a loved one if they get sick. most libertarians and anarchists aren't going to be able to overcome their govt bad, taxes bad mindset to make this trade-off, so in self-defense the rest of us are probably just going to have to force this change on them without their consent.
Uch, again it's the
Uch, again it's the presentation of Libertarians as if they don't have their own ideas and are just contrarians.
In case you haven't noticed, Matt Welch, the author of the second article you cited, does have his own ideas; they're simply different from the ones you have. Besides he makes the same exact point as you, that the French system probably does have quite a few things to teach the American system, but he also makes the point that state control is not the ideal or permanent solution.
Hmmm, that sounds familiar...
the french system is chock full of state control
as are all the systems that work better than ours.
Hipparchia, I thought you
Hipparchia,
I thought you might want to take a look at this. It's about the development of how the government originally got involved in health insurance because the prices were too low:
http://libertariannation.org/a/f12l3.html
yep, govt can be hijacked
and the ama has certainly done their share over the years.
i'm not opposed to various licensing requirements though. i want anybody who is going to be diagnosing, operating on, or prescribing medicines for me to have some actual knowledge, training, and experience. govts are good for enforcing this requirement too. doctors back in the day of snake oil salesmen and baby-deliverers who refused to wash their hands or change their filthy lab coats between patients killed a lot of people [when they weren't just fleecing them].
i don't read the story at your link as proof that the govt got involved simply because the price of insurance was too low. there was quite a bit involved in the early stages of regulating both medicine and how to pay for it. it should be noted that even with the low-cost groups described at your link, many people could not afford medical care at that time.