By Christopher Schlegel
Identification…
Lately, there have been a great many news reports, newspaper and magazine articles and other media coverings of the “health care crisis”. Most of them include or end with a line to the effect that the “health care system in America is broken and the only way to fix it is a National Health Care Program run by the government.”
The central political issue at stake here is the definition of the proper function of government. A government’s proper function is to create and enforce laws that protect individual rights (and therefore, a civilized society). The central moral issue at stake here is the premise of Altruism versus Egoism. Those that desire government control of the health care industry feel that “Man is his brother’s keeper”. Those (me included) that desire a free market health care industry know that no man is his brother’s keeper. And further, that the desire to implement government control is not to “help people” anyway. The goal is to destroy the health care industry and force anyone that has achieved anything to sacrifice it for the benefit of those that have not achieved anything.
The specific reason the government should not be involved in running any kind of market activity (medical, industry, production, retail, service) is that it is not the proper function of government to do so. It would be a conflict of interest for them to do so.
For example, in a sporting contest there are two competing teams and referee officials that enforce the rules of the game. It would be unfair (an injustice) if one of the competing teams was also officiating the game. The people who run the government are supposed to make and enforce the laws that define what fraud, theft, violation of rights, et cetera are in any given business context. Referees can make mistakes but at least the system is organized with impartiality and objectivity in mind; at least more so than if Team A could call any penalty they wanted at any time on Team B for any reason or no reason at all.
People with a liberal perspective on government regulation of the market usually assume the position that anyone in business is fundamentally corrupt and any kind of government intervention is a guaranteed cure-all. This assumption is rooted in the premise that a human being that works for the government is trustworthy and a human being working for profit in a business is a scoundrel.