Stuff isn’t free: conservative straw man edition
November 8, 2007
Ross Douthat offers an interesting theory on the future of small government conservatism, but it misses the mark here:
As rich countries get richer, the demand for state services - and particularly middle-class entitlements - may naturally rise, because people increasingly feel like they can afford the pinch of taxation that comes with, say, lavishing more money on public schools or giving Grandma free prescription drugs. A richer country is, in this sense, a less tax-sensitive country, in which voters are more favorably disposed to liberalism’s spiel that, in Voegeli’s phrase, “we want the government to give things to you and do things for you.”
Maybe some liberals see the government as a no-cost dispenser of goods and services (*), and I’m certain that many conservatives think that liberals believe this, but it’s misguided and obscures the basic benefits of social-action liberalism.
Let’s say I’m willing to spend some money to prevent catastrophic climate change. Right now, my options are fairly limited. I can buy CFL light bulbs, ride my bike to work, buy a membership in the Sierra Club. But this kind of thing, on an individual level, is obviously ineffective at reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Absent some other mechanism — a fair market price for carbon emissions, for example, or a regulatory infrastructure — for turning invididual action into collective action, it won’t work.
The problem is such that I’m unable to do my part in saving the world unless the government creates a market in which I can do so. I don’t think the government is able to “give” me a clean environment for free. It’s much more accurate to say that governmental action is the best method we have for protecting the environment, and I’m willing to pay taxes in order to have clean air and clean water.
Similarly, I don’t think universal health care would be free, nor do I want the government to “give” me health care. Rather, I’m willing to spend some amount of money to enroll in a health care plan that does not suffer from profit maximization at the expense of patient medical care. The only option on the table for this appears to be some kind of universal health system (either through government-provided insurance, or through stricter regulation of insurance company behavior, etc).
I’m willing to pay money in order to insure that, should my future self get sick, I’ll still be able to participate in the job market, that I’ll never have to hear the term “pre-existing condition”, that my coverage won’t be curtailed or subjected to un-insurance-like post facto price discrimination, and so on.
And given the business models employed by the insurance industry, given the general efficiency of and satisfaction with Medicare, and given the success of universal health care in every other Western country, I’m confident that a universal program would work, and be a drastic improvement over our current system.
All of which means that I vote for representatives who agree with me on these issues, in the hope that we can convince enough people to add health care and environmental protection to the list of things for which we believe there’s a societal responsibility.
To some extent, this involves making other people subject to majoritarian decisions about collective spending. Maybe Joe “H2″ Hummer doesn’t value the future of the earth, and is unwilling to spend money to ameliorate global warming. But since I’m not a libertarian, I think that’s too bad for him. It’s called society, and it’s why we vote on things.
(*) Either because they view the federal treasury as so remote as to constitute found money (cf. local decisions on road building, once the feds have agreed to pay for it), or because they think at least some of their costs will be borne by other people — “tax the rich”, etc.
November 11th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Hey Ben who says that Climate change is a bad thing? How do we know that we are really causeing it from what I’ve read that is just a hypothosis it’s never been acctually proven. I just saw a report that debunks that whole scientific consences. Over 19000 Scientists have come out against that Man Made Global Warming Hoax. But hey it’s a free Country Spend all you want to fight Natural Change if you want to. As for Health Care I don’t know about you but I would rather have control over my own policy instead of some Government Agency. I believe that government Tendrals in the Health industry is the probelm not the solution that is where we differ.Just so you know I do Value the future of the earth I just don’t buy into the fact that I’m hurting it by my own exsistence.
November 12th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
As for Health Care I don’t know about you but I would rather have control over my own policy instead of some Government Agency. I believe that government Tendrals in the Health industry is the probelm not the solution that is where we differ
Don’t you work for the government? Aren’t CHAMPUS/TRICARE and the VA universally recognized as providing some of the best health care around? Aren’t you happy to know that your health care plan, created as it was by pinko commie liberals whose interest was in providing health care, not in making money, will never deny you coverage or restrict your benefits?
November 15th, 2007 at 7:32 am
Well it was my CHOICE to join the military. I just think everyone should have there own healthcare plan and make the decisions themselves. Don’t you want control over your own healthcare?
November 15th, 2007 at 10:09 am
But I don’t have control over my health care in any meaningful sense. My insurance company has leverage with my employer; my employer has leverage with me and the insurance company; and I have leverage with my employer, but we’re not all bargaining from positions of equal strength.
If the insurance company decides not to cover X, or not to pay for Y, I don’t have many options. I suppose I have the CHOICE to pay out-of-pocket for the procedure, and I have the CHOICE to sue the insurance company (althought the Republicans are trying to take that choice away), but realistically, I’m just screwed. In many cases, I wouldn’t even have the CHOICE of finding a new job, thanks to a “pre-existing condition”.
Wouldn’t it be better if I had the CHOICE of buying into Medicare, or a similar program? All of the Democratic plans follow this principle. They don’t forcibly enroll anyone in anything. They provide the option to join a government-operated insurance plan, which won’t discriminate based on market segmentation or pre-existing conditions.
What that does is create a bottom-line insurance that’s the minmum acceptable standard. If my insurance company has a better plan, I have the CHOICE to stick with it. If they have a worse plan, I have the CHOICE to sign up for Medicare.
Under any of the Democratic plans, people would have more control over their own health care, and a greater ability to make decisions for themselves. The principle of universal health care corrects many of the misaligned incentives that are currently screwing things up, and does so in a way that gives people much more flexibility about their health care.
November 21st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
But my question is how long will that last until they try to take over everything. I would rather have no Government in health care of course it’s kinda of hard to do that for the military. As for the the PreExisting condition problem the most logical fix for that would to have them get a higher deductible. IMHO if the Government get out of health care and we fix the problems with our Law system that will fix most of the problems with health care.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
Most estimates place the deadweight loss of medical malpractice suits, etc, at about 1% of the health care economy. Even if you could reduce that to zero (and even if the means by which you could do so were desirable — sometimes, after all, the doctor deserves to get sued), how would that fix anything, much less “most of the problems with health care”?
How will a higher deductible help if the insurance company won’t cover you? What if you can’t afford the higher deductible? And have you ever seen how much it costs to get cancer treatment? Very few people can afford to pay for it. Should they go without treatment?
Medicare has been going strong for over forty years, and has not yet “tried to take over everything”. If you want “no government in health care”, should we get rid of the program?