Andrew Bernstein writes in Forbes, Whatever the Supreme Court’s Obamacare Ruling, Here’s a Free Market Healthcare Solution, 6/24/12

Excerpt:

By contrast, look at the food industry.  In this field, America has something much closer to a free market. For one, such innovative minds as George Washington Carver, Cyrus McCormick, John Deere, and many others have been free to revolutionize American agricultural science and technology, resulting in a stupendous supply of food.

For another, most individuals are responsible for their own food expenses. The result is that demand is not governmentally supercharged, prices remain relatively stable and low, and an immense majority of Americans can afford adequate quantities of nutritious food. What would happen to demand for food if the government coerced employers to provide food payment for employees—and if the state instituted Foodcare and Foodaid for the elderly and the poor?  In other words, what would happen to food prices if most people’s food was bought by a third party? And, especially, what would happen if government policies simultaneously restricted supply?

An individual, not the government, is responsible for his life. Neither food nor healthcare (nor any value) is a right. If possession of X is a right—at whose expense? One man’s “right” to healthcare for which he cannot pay means that the government forces another man to pay for it. What, then, of the robbed man’s rights? An individual has the right only to the healthcare for which he can pay or to which charitable persons—including physicians—voluntarily contribute.

HKO comments:

Government intervenes to solve a problem only to create an additional problem which -surprise!- calls for more government intervention.  I fail to see why the laws of economics are assumed to be suspended for this one service just because it is so critical.  Is health any more critical than food?

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