Patient Power

Is health care like the fire department?

June 17th, 2008 | by Brian T. Schwartz |

Last week I challenged the view that health care should be a government service because it is allegedly like police protection.  A similar analogy is to the fire department.  Advocating single-payer health care, Michael Moore tells NPR:

That you should not have a private, profit-making insurance company in the middle between the doctor and the patient. That is crazy. The doctor should be able to decide what the patient needs and then perform the procedure. And the patient should not have to worry about whether or not they can afford it — just as if your house was on fire, you shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not you can afford to have the fire department put it out.

For Michael Moore, one’s body is analagous to one’s house, and providers of medical services are analagous to the services of a fire department.  But what does the fire department do?  It puts out a fire.  Your house is still damaged.  The fire department does not repair the fire damage.

If you want to repair the damage, you do have to “worry about whether or not you can afford” it.  That’s why people buy homeowners insurance or renters insurance.  That is, they take personal responsibility for making sure their own property is in the condition they desire.  They do not push this responsibility off to government, “society,” or everyone else in the world except for themselves.  The same should apply whether the property in question is one’s own house, the possessions in rented property, or one’s own body.

tags: Michael Moore

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