On our horizon, I fear, looms a great and terrible beast, alluring in beauty to those who cannot or will not recognize the glitter of fangs or distinguish from a luxuriously brushed coat, the claws which peek out.

It has become second nature for politicians, propagandists, and aspiring demagogues to seek and secure power by appealing to the vanity of man's imperfections. This past Presidential election was no less an example. Essentially, the race was not between opposing world-views and ideologies at odds with each other. Instead, each candidate tried to out-promise the other to secure votes by effective bribery. The only distinction between typical bribery and the conduct we observed, primarily from Obama but reciprocated in McCain, is that the candidates promised taxpayer money for a vote, rather than promising a vote in return for private money. In a free society, legality does not translate to morality, although I think the case can be made that such redistributionist action can and ought to be made illegal. I suppose, in the end, the equation is different in semantics. Money changes hands as a reward for voting a particular way. Which party does what matters little.

But, the beast which may spell forever the death of individual freedom and the possibility for its recovery, is so called 'health care reform' which is simply the latest moniker and mask for the nationalization of all medicine and care. A great many others have gone into intricate detail as to exactly how any sort of health care promoted by the current crop of control-freaks is truly, at heart, a simple, if slow, takeover of the individual's right and responsibility to choose.

In an earlier post I noted that the individual is the only agent capable of properly ascribing value to his produce. If he does not feel the exchange offered for his effort is of great enough value he does not have to engage in the transaction. He is also the only agent capable of properly ascribing value to those things he desires; he does not have to purchase. So, how does this apply to health care and services?

How would an individual approach a situation of so-called 'universal' health care coverage? First, you must understand the individual. Humans are self-interested by nature. We are primarily concerned with the well being of our own bodies, and not those of other people to any extent so great. That is why it is laudable and displays uncommon valor when our military men and women gallantly sacrifice themselves to save their brothers in arms or even we Americans and our liberties. But the overwhelming average human approach remains that each person cares more for himself than he does any other person. That is not greedy. It's survival and is moral since no one must take up the slack to provide for your survival if you take care of yourself with your own able-bodied/minded effort in the first place.

So, since the individual values himself infinitely to remain alive and as physically worthless when dead, it stands to reason that he will act on that pricelessness by visiting doctors, hospitals, and clinics for every single malady or ailment, whether legitimate or perceived. He will not economize because his life is infinitely valuable to him. The only reason to economize, the true cost of procedures, he no longer has to pay.

The statement of infinite value is made consistently by the left and the right. Life is too valuable to be arbitrarily tagged at a price. I agree, wholeheartedly. But all things cost money. So, what about the life of doctors, nurses, biochemists, surgeons, anesthesiologists, psychologists, pharmacologists, and mechanical engineers? No one advocates that those people be disallowed to charge for their labor and their expertise. There is a value which cannot be separated from the services and products they provide. Who is to value what they are worth, what their efforts and skills are worth? They are and their patients are. To say that someone should have no authority in setting their own worth is to declare them unworthy of basic humanity. Additionally, to say that a government bureaucrat should have a stake in what transaction a doctor and patient can agree upon or even to declare that they must engage in a transaction, is similarly debasing of individual human freedom and worth.

So, what of the patient, you ask? The patient is prime to decide his own worth as well. He will value his life infinitely, regardless of the system set in place. But no system can accept infinite value, because all medical care requires effort and all effort is limited to the time each of us has on this Earth. I advocate that people be permitted to engage in those transactions they mutually agree upon, without arbitrary force being applied to either. Once again, to try to separate a person from deciding their own worth is similar to the attitudes which enable slavery. It is simply debasing and devaluing life.

So, the doctors value their time and effort infinitely, trying to better their situation and their families' situations but at the same time patients and patient's families value themselves infinitely as well. How are these people supposed to come to grips? The media, education centers, and current political establishment will tell you that a system which assigns real-world numbers to the treatments will provide the proper care to the people who need it.

I agree with that as well. However, with players of self-professed infinite worth on either side of the transaction and neither having any responsibility to market forces, there remains only one way to settle the trade; bureaucratic force. I have little faith in people who can logically regard the benefactors of their decisions as arbitrary to their own existence. With such players calling the shots, there will be a vast amount of dissatisfaction because very few people have any real control over their situation.

Would free market forces settle trades as well? Yes, and much more efficiently since the players involved in the game are much more in control of their own situations (See note below). In the case of insurance companies, customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal because to continually disappoint the customer means to lose them to competitors, and thus continued survival of the company demands quality care. The same is true for doctors. Patients will find themselves limited by their financial circumstance but most will be able to pay for their disaster coverage on health insurance, as long as the government gets out of the way of insurance companies writing the plans their customers demand.

Finally, I'm a strong believer in private charity. I know for a fact that people are built with a degree of compassion and empathy and when successful will give in larger portions to those who truly need a hand up. The real difference between this action and what they government seeks to do is that private charity is much more carefully doled out. Abuse is not nearly the problem with private money that it is in government. Is that statement subject? Sure, but is it not also a fact we can all observe, especially with this current government which simply 'lost' several hundred BILLION dollars? You do the math. Regardless, no one is as careful with someone else's money as they are with their own (Ref. the great Dr. Milton Friedman).

I'll leave off with this statement; there is no preservation of human life in the collectivising of a population. That demands weeding out the individuals who are a thorn to the social objectives, individuals who seek their own objectives, and individuals who are unproductive to meet their rate of consumption from the public coffer. There is no way around that. Read here and make sure to take close note of Britain's QALY system which rations care based upon a person's usefulness to society. Once a society embraces doctor-assisted, government-funded suicide (as several states in America have) and nationalized health care, the difference between eugenics actions of Nationalsozialisten, slaughtering millions of people, and the 'usefulness' formulas for American health services, are a matter of who is targeted and why. The end result is the barbaric murder of the defenseless, for a social goal. No, the only moral arrangement is for individuals to operate as individuals without outside force compelling them to act in any way to which they never agreed.

Note: I feel it's necessary to acknowledge the situation of 'emergency' care. A patient may have no control over their receipt of care if the situation which demands care has incapacitated that patient. Thus, the doctor hasn't the slightest idea if the patient can pay for their services, or if the patient would desire services at all. In these cases, I think it is fair that the doctor, by Hippocratic oath, will do their level best to restore the patient to health. As far as I am aware, all hospitals have either write-off budgets for those patients who simply will not be able to pay, and for whom no funding will be received, even from government, or financial experts who will help patients set up payment plans that anyone who holds a mortgage or a car loan would die to have (pardon the pun). As it stands, the market could be made a great deal more free and it is very obvious to me that such a reduction in government invasion would be a great boost to American medicine, which is already the best in the world. To this add tort reform, a cancellation of all mandates on insurance companies, a heavy handed reduction or even closure of the FDA, and set in motion the phasing out of medicare and medicaid programs to be replaced by private charities, and nothing would stand in the way of patients, doctors, and companies for mutually benefiting each other in transactions. As it stands right now, before the beast rises, American medicine is not really all that free.