Reno Hayek Symposium

Rationing health care, especially critical care and end of life care, has become a cause celebre in the Obamacare discussions. Let’s face the fact, we are not immortal, we will die and odds-on we will suffer before we die. Sorry, but there’s no way around that fact.

Healthcare is a limited resource. It has become more limited because it has been billed as a “right,” or it has been billed as “free,” or it has been billed as a “taxpayer obligation.” Well, none of the billings approach reality. What each and every one of us has a “right” to do is suffer and  die, what we are “free” to do is suffer and die, and that is what the taxpayers should expect each of us to do.

Each of us has, in my opinion, a moral obligation to use his own resources and the resources of our body politic, for the best human outcome, weighing all aspects of the use and the possible outcomes. This is and should be an individual obligation and a free choice.

So, while I may think it is more valuable to keep myself alive for an additional six months rather than donate that same exorbitant cost to cancer research, another may think, and justifiably so, that it is more important that he pay the cost and stay alive for that short time, perhaps because he is the prime researcher conducting the research that will save others. Or perhaps he and others make different choices, selfish or altruistic, which on balance reflect Adam Smith’s invisible hand at work.

What to do? Let Obama make the universal decision? How many researchers, how many Einsteins would he kill? No, the choice should be individual, either at the personal level or at the individual choice of the insurance company level. So, it is not true that only the government can ration. The individual can ration, the family can ration, the individual’s freely chosen insurance company can ration.

At the end of the day, the price mechanism in a free market, if left to function, will do the job effectively. What we must all urge is that the market be left to function freely without Obama interference. We must urge that the insurance companies be free to compete across state lines, we must demand that we become the consumers, responsible for our own freely made decisions.

Simple solutions: Tax employer provided insurance as the income it is. Allow insurance companies to compete across state lines. Cap “pain and suffering” damages promoted by the plaintiff attorneys to fatten their own pockets; these hidden costs limit our lives in a free economy as they are passed onto us.

What do you think?

Tom Motherway, tom@renohayek.net