The left’s entire approach to poverty is to segregate the poor into inferior public provision, while the rest of society enjoys the benefits of quasi-private provision. It’s as though the left wing in American politics wants socialism for the poor and capitalism for everyone else.

Read the whole post: Keeping Poor People Poor | John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org.

The logical fallacy underlying both these reactions is that our only choices are to either (1) force hospitals and doctors to provide care and citizens to purchase insurance, or (2) “Let Them Die.” This erroneously limited view fails to consider the existence of humane, liberty-preserving alternatives.  It also ignores the history of increasingly intrusive government actions which have seemingly left us with only these two equally unacceptable choices: government coercion or Let Them Die. …

Our only options are not “Government Control or Let Them Die.”

Restoring our freedom will Let Us Live.

Read the whole article: False Dichotomy: ObamaCare or Let Them Die.

Why are [Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security] sacrosanct? Because, whatever else you can say about the entitlement state, no one disputes that it’s a moral imperative. Inefficient? Maybe. Expensive? You bet. But morally questionable? Absolutely not.

The problem with the entitlement state is not simply that it is bankrupting this country–the problem is that it is morally bankrupt.

Read the whole article: The Entitlement State Is Morally Bankrupt – Forbes.

One reason why entrepreneurs do what they do is that they want to become rich. I don’t think that getting rich is the main motivation. The possibility of innovating in order to change the world may be an even stronger desire for most of them.

But you can almost guarantee there will be no entrepreneurship if you do two things: (a) eliminate all possibility of getting rich, and (b) make it impossible to change anything without the approval of an intractable bureaucracy.

That in a nutshell is my explanation for why our two most visibly dysfunctional social systems — health care and public education — remain so dysfunctional.

via Why Profit Is Our Best Friend | John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org.

Blitzer talks about “society” letting someone die, but whom does he mean? Each individual is part of society, so isn’t the real question, “What are YOU going to do about it?” Treating “society” as some super-entity above and beyond the individuals who compose it causes two problems. First, it gives individuals an excuse to do nothing by their own initiative; second, it encourages many to ignore the actual victims of politicians’ forced wealth transfer schemes.

via Pajamas Media » Health Insurance and Personal Responsibility.

Search the world’s ethical codes and you will have a hard time finding any that are consistent with a health reform [HR 3590] that:

• Gives people in health insurance exchanges up to 10 times as much federal subsidy as people at the same income level getting insurance at work.
• Forces young people to pay two or three times the real cost of their insurance in order to subsidize older people who have more income and more assets.
• Takes from low-income seniors in order to provide subsidized health insurance for non-seniors who have higher incomes.
• Takes from people who use tanning salons and people who need crutches and wheelchairs and pacemakers and gives to … well …. who knows?

Read the whole post: Is There a Moral Case for ObamaCare? | John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog | NCPA.org.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons‘ summary of Yaron Brook’s talk:

To save American healthcare, not to mention to save the country itself, Advocates of freedom, free markets, and capitalism must take the moral high ground from the proponents of government-control, Dr. Yaron Brook tells patients and doctors on May 14, 2011 at a Doctors Town Hall.

Whether an idea works does not determines its success in the political system, but rather whether an idea is considered morally correct. Capitalism is proven to be effective but more importantly that that, it is the only ethically sound economic system. Free markets depend on voluntary cooperation between individuals not government force.

Dr. Brook is the Executive Director of the Ayn Rand Institute.

via YouTube – Yaron Brook, PhD – The immorality of government medicine.

More of Yaron Brook’s writings on health care.

If you ever need an organ for a transplant operation, chances are you will die before you get one. You can improve your odds by joining LifeSharers. Membership is free.

… LifeSharers members promise to donate upon their death, and they give fellow members first access to their organs. As a LifeSharers member, you will have access to organs that otherwise may not be available to you.

John Stossel is a member. He says: “There ought to be a free market in organs, but since that’s illegal, LifeSharers may be the next best thing. It’s criminal that dozens die every day waiting for organs.” Check out its board of advisors; it includes a few free-market economists and policy analysts including Richard Epstein.

See also:

• Institute for Justice video on the unjust the National Organ Transplant Act.
• Drew Carey and Reason.tv illustrate the deadly consequences of compensating organ donors.

Throughout the health-care debate of 2010–11, Obama repeatedly referred to government-run health care as “a core ethical and moral obligation,” arguing that, “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.” In speeches, he repeatedly cited the story of Natoma Canfield, an Ohio cancer patient without health insurance, as a justification for his health-care legislation. Many of Obama’s supporters on the political left made similar moral claims. Vanderbilt University professor Bruce Barry wrote in the New York Times that, “Health insurance in a civilized society is a collective moral obligation.” T. R. Reid, former foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, called universal health care a “moral imperative.” Ezra Klein, another writer for the Washington Post, agreed that it is an “ethical obligation.”

But all such claims are wrong—morally wrong.

Why?  Read “Health Care and the Separation of Charity and State” at The Objective Standard.

As many authors have pointed out, health care is not a right.

Stefan Molyneux tries to understand what this alleged “right” to health could mean. For example:

When does a woman in the process of becoming a doctor switch from someone with a right to receive health care to someone with an obligation to provide it? In other words, since from one day to the next she becomes subjected to completely opposite moral absolutes, what changes in her nature? Does she somehow become a different species? And at what objective point does it occur? It’s certainly not the first day of her classes – and yet it is also not ten years into her career. Is it at 12:01am on the day before she sees her first patient? Is that when she flips into this alternate and opposite moral universe? Think about how silly this is as a moral theory – 12:00am, she is owed health care – 12:01am, she owes everyone else health care. Madness!

If you want more questions to make you wonder what the “right” to health care means in practice, read the whole article: The Argument From Morality in Action: The Right to Health Care.

(Via Justin Longo.)