Thank you for your thoughtful reply. Please allow me to clarify why it is that we Americans are so unique and why we differ from Europeans in both thought and action. Our history, culture, geography and expectations differentiate us. We can’t help it. We prefer to stretch the limits of innovation, both in technological realms and liberties. Our government is unique, our transportation systems, public education, how we wage war, and our treatment of our elders all differ from those in the rest of the world. Our customs may not always be better, but they identify us as American, nonetheless. One theme permeating all these endeavors is our individuality. The USA brand of individualism dictates that we get what we want as consumers and as healthcare workers. Yet, our decency as a society mandates that we care for those less fortunate.

Thus, with respect to your examples of New Zealand’s healthcare system working for the people you described, I counter with the 30 or 40 patients I saw last week in the hospital, in dialysis clinics, and in my office, who – aside from those who already covered by government insurance – have no means to afford the actual cost of their care. Luckily, our built-in safety-net composed of Medicare, charities, and simple gratis service, saves the day. No patient in America is being left to die in the street for lack of insurance. While optimum healthcare is not considered a right, America has made it a human right. And much more so in the US than anywhere else in the world. It is precisely a socialist movement toward universal healthcare that will reverse that, turning a human right into a guaranteed legal right, and thereby denying both in the end. Some of us believe that the free-market can (and does) supply the solution. My hospital will continue treating people who cannot pay. They will still turn a profit. I will continue to hop out of bed at 1AM to save the life of a patient who I know will never pay. It is just the way we work. When universal healthcare imposes rules on me, I think I would still go in to treat the patient in the middle of the night, but only if the governmental oversight committee has decided that it’s reasonable to spend the money to save that particular patient. In the end, better to leave those decisions to me and my patients.

http://www.westandfirm.org/blog/2008/06/would-americans-accept-european-medical.html

Respectfully,
Paul Hsieh, MD

First, I’ll point out that health care is not the same as health insurance. But that is not the underlying issue.

Nor is whether someone’s plan for politician-controlled health care “will work.” The hidden premise behind that is that it’s OK to use people as a means to your ends, rather than respecting their rights to live their own lives as ends in themselves.

People claim that “it won’t work” if people are free to donate (or not donate) to a health care charity, and hence government should punish people who do not donate to government charities like Medicaid and Medicare. “It won’t work” is shorthand for saying that people, if free, will do what they want to do rather than what politicians force them to do.

When talking about “values that we have,” why must our values be channeled through a government program? That sounds like a rather intolerant way of going about things, as surely some people will be forced to pursue the values of others, and be prohibited to express their own values.

Even if we all shared the value of people having access to health care (or education, or food, etc.), a monolithic government-controlled charity would have one vision of how to do this, whereas individuals would have several and differing opinions on how to achieve this goal. It’s immortal to force other people to donate to someone else’s notion of a good cause.

Economist Frederic Bastiat wrote in The Law (1850):

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

One step toward a more tolerant method of charitable giving is charity tax credits, which I address here.

An extreme example of this would be: Put everyone in prison except one person. Now, make everyone in prison turn the cranks of electric generators to create electricity for the home of the one free person. Look: Free electricity! Isn’t our plan great?