Two areas of policy that I don’t ordinarily touch are Education and Healthcare. I just don’t know enough about the economics or deep underlying theories to have as informed opinions as I would like. However, with Healthcare reform once again in our leaders’ crosshairs, I’m going to go out on a limb. Any national health care policy should follow this first principle:
It is immoral to allow personal wealth to be the deciding factor in the provision of timely life-saving medicine.
I don’t know what single-payer health care means. Socialized medicine and European-style health care are just phrases that are meant to provoke feeling rather than describe an actual policy approach. So I don’t have a policy solution to recommend. Paying for medical insurance, however it’s carved out of my income (by my employer, by myself, through tax rebates), seems reasonable enough to me economically. However, it is probably more expensive than it should be, and for many people in our country, simply unaffordable when compared to the more immediate needs of food and shelter. So as our leaders once again try to reform the health care system, I hope that first principles are always foremost in their minds. We can not make the availability of medicine dependent on the ability to pay for it, nor can we saddle people with an immense financial burden after the medicine is provided.
