What’s different about health care?
The overwhelming majority of Americans are not Communists. In general, we believe that a free-ish market is a better way to organize the production and distribution of goods and services than government departments. But an awful lot of Americans seem to want government-run health care. Why? What makes health care so different from the rest of the economy that many of us want to turn it over to the people who brought us the Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles?
Is it because health care is a necessity? Food is a necessity, but no mainstream politicians are pushing plans for tax-funded universal distribution of cheezburgers.
Is it because health care is expensive? Housing is expensive, and it’s a necessity, so why is nobody promising me socialized apartments?
Is it because we’re not happy with the health care the market is providing us with? I doubt that, too. I work for Microsoft, and everybody’s got tons of complaints about our products, but nobody wants to replace us with Federal Windows and Federal Internet Explorer.
Is it because other first-world countries have socialized medicine? If Canada jumped off a bridge, would you jump off, too? Besides which, other first-world countries really don’t have socialized medicine. Britain and Canada may have true socialized medicine, but Switzerland and the Netherlands only have mandatory private insurance programs, and France and Germany have health care systems which are more market-oriented than America’s current health care system (which includes Medicare, Medicaid, and a tax system which heavily subsidizes full-service employer-provided health insurance).
