Funmurphys: the Blog

Not Gone Yet

OK, I've gotten so many calls and emails begging me for one last post before leaving, I'm writing one last one.

"Universal healthcare" as in government funded, not as in open market, is pushed as a panacea in certain circles. These circles find it such an obviously superior solution, I rarely see any real supporting rationale for it (everybody else is doing it isn't a rationale that I, as the father of a teenage daughter, find real).

There are two main ways of allocating resources - one way that decreases the availability of the resource, and the other which increases the availability of the resource. Socialism, or single payer, or "universal healthcare" is the way that decreases the availability of the resource. This isn't a question of theory -- it's been empirically proven repeatedly. The free market is the way that increases the availability of the resource.

But healthcare is something too important to be left to the market you say. Or healthcare doesn't work like other goods because you have to have it inorder to live you say. Doesn't food meet those same requirements? Yet we allocate food in this country via the free market, and the crisis du jour is obesity. If we stopped allocating healthcare in this country via the current odd employer standing in for government system, and instead allocated healthcare via a free market, the crisis du jour would be longevity.