by the Safety Net
Sam Aurelius Milam III
Medical services, like most things that people need, are available in limited supply. Whoever provides the services needs to make a living and, reasonably, wants to get paid for what he provides. Therefore, left to themselves, providers tend not to offer services that they can't sell. Most people have limited means, and therefore can't afford all of the medical services that they want. Therefore, a preponderance of the services offered have to be affordable, or they will not be sold. When market forces are allowed to operate, they tend to keep medical services relatively cheap. If expensive services are seldom available for most people, at least the cheap ones are. However, this also causes a perceived inequity. People who can afford more or better medical services get them. People who can't, don't.
A seemingly reasonable answer to this perceived inequity is medical insurance. People voluntarily pool their resources. This provides a reservoir of money that members can use to buy medical services that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. However, there are unforeseen consequences.
Prior to the advent of medical insurance, there are (in principle) only two parties to a medical transaction — the party providing the service and the party receiving it. The advent of medical insurance adds a third party. The function of the third party, the insurance company, is to pay the bill. The presence of the third party causes the market to behave differently. The people receiving medical services no longer need to be concerned with cost. They can afford to "buy" any service, however expensive, because the insurance pays for it. Service providers don't need to keep services cheap. They can sell any service, however expensive, because it doesn't matter whether or not the customer can afford it. This encourages an increase in the cost of services that are already available. It also encourages the development of other services that are inherently more expensive.
When only a few people have medical insurance, its influence will be unimportant. However, when the costs of a sufficiently large proportion of medical services are paid by insurance, the costs of the services will no longer be limited by the customers' ability to pay. The costs of medical services will then rise. The increase in medical costs will eventually threaten even the ability of the insurance companies to pay. In response, the insurance companies will increase the cost of medical insurance. Eventually, people will find themselves in a situation even worse the original one. Again, they will be unable to afford all of the medical services that they want. Worse yet, they will not be able to afford even the insurance. Since one of the consequences of the widespread use of insurance is to make even the previously cheap services expensive, people will not be able to afford even the services that they would have been able to afford, before the advent of insurance.
There is another consequence of the widespread availability of medical insurance. Ultimately it is a worse consequence. Once the payment of medical bills becomes the responsibility of the insurance companies, the determination of what a customer can afford will no longer be made by the customer. That choice will be transferred to the insurance companies. Thus, not only will people lose access to previously cheap medical services, they will lose their power to chose what they should have.
People ought to have the right to freely associate. They should be able to enter into whatever agreements they believe will benefit them. However, there are some forms of associations and agreements that should probably be avoided. I believe that medical insurance is one of them. With or without insurance, medical services are, ultimately, available in limited supply. With insurance, they are much more expensive. With insurance, people lose their power to determine, within the limits of their own finances, what medical treatment they will have. Instead, such decisions pass to the bureaucracies. The services will still be available. The difference is that, instead of going to people who can afford them, they will go to people who comply with the prerequisites established by the bureaucracies.
Letters the Editor
Don't worry about the flaws in the Constitution. We are well on our way to belonging to the U.N. It owns all our state parks & so many sides of our territory — add to that all the "legal" immigrants with dual citizenship, we are fast becoming a non-nation ....
.... I enjoyed your article on the recent school shootings. The way that certain groups are using these tragedies for political advantage is tantamount to child abuse.
The following response to your response to Elliot on page 3 [June issue].
1. People who think for themselves do not by that fact have any more or less influence. You address direction rather than magnitude. The claim seems to be one chiefly designed to enable you to claim that people with whom you disagree are having their thinking done for them by someone else.
2. You are right that it was the 13th Amendment that outlawed slavery and also that the Civil War Amendments (13, 14 & 15) fundamentally changed the constitutional understanding at the point of a gun. I
— continued at the top of page 3 —
|disagree, however, that the consequences of that
are so dire as to justify refighting the War of the Southern Rebellion.
Equality (the principal idea introduced by the 14th Amendment) is not about result (which would arguably be slavery) but about equal treatment and equal opportunity.
For example, Jackson, Mississippi, is ordered to integrate its municipal swimming pools. Instead, the pools are closed down. No problem, say the Supremes. There is no right to have a swimming pool provided by the government, and a lot of cities have no such thing. But if you have one, it must be open to all.
3. There is no such entity as society unless a working majority of us agree that there is and conduct ourselves as if there is. And that state of affairs exists. There is no such thing as an Internet, either, by your apparent standards--but I bet you get this e-mail.
— Steve; San Antonio, Texas
1. People who think for themselves are less likely to mindlessly obey government. Whether or not they agree with me is irrelevant. They will still resist the deceptions attempted by government and be more difficultto control. 2. Equality was not the principal idea introduced by the 14th amendment. That amendment defined a citizen as being subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Jurisdiction means power and control. After that, citizenship was indistinguishable from slavery. That was the principal idea introduced by the 14th Amendment. Furthermore, equality isn't necessarily a good thing. Ants are equal. 3. A government or a corporation is an individual, a party. It has boundaries and identity. It can sue or be sued. Society has none of these things. The opinion of a "working majority" is irrelevant. Society isn't a body politic, no matter how many people incorrectly believe otherwise. Actions taken in the name of society are actually taken by and for the benefit of some individual or group, usually government, using "society" as an excuse. As an entity, society doesn't exist. It has no rights. Only people have rights. 4. It is never appropriate to call a privilege a right. A right is something that is within your ability, for which you don't need permission, and which will be generally or customarily condoned or tolerated. If you need permission, then it isn't a right. It's a privilege. Courts don't grant rights. They grant privileges.
The Independence Day article is very nice. The Declaration situation was apparently similar to the current European Union. If the current US were such a union of 50 sovereign states, they would certainly be less of a burden to US oppressed citizens, & to the world.
School violence is indeed a symptom of a sick society. The numbers involved are considerably smaller than the CIA orchestrated slaughters in places like Rwanda. Nonetheless, if school shootings become a regular habit of psychopathic US life, it will reflect poorly on the country's reputation. Certainly arming teachers &/or students is not a solution. Libertarians as well as liberals should be able to understand that when pointless violence is a product of social oppression, the only solution is the removal of that oppression, by force if necessary, rather than institutionalizing a state of perpetual violent chaos in "educational" institutions. Similarly, I would agree with you that no education at all would be better than the US system of brainwashing which is called education. But real education is a human thing, & it does indeed take an education system as rotten as this country's to make your anti-public school attitude sound like it might have some justifiable point.
Similarly, it takes a society as rotten as that of the contemporary age to make arguments like Cormier's, in favor of the struggle for survival as superior to a life of culture, seem like it might have a point. Fortunately, Cormier's argument fails on the point so important to us aesthetes: contemporary society is absolutely anti-culture, & that is its primary problem. Only such oppressive barbarism could make animal existence seem superior. Cormier has another basic philosophical flaw: he doesn't practice what he preaches. If he were really a libertarian egoist who believed that animal existence is superior, he would go live in the woods, & not try to help us deluded believers in human civilization. He would not interfere with those trying to express more human values. Both he & we would be happier. That he does so interfere, rather than living the life of the rogue ape he preaches, is transparently anti-libertarian.
Aristotle believed in absolute monarchy, an idea which his pupil Alexander the Great used to justify his own attempt to become the solitary master of the world. Who knows how far he would have succeeded if he had not been struck down by cosmic forces in his early 30's? What if he had lived to be 80 or more, like Stalin? The monarchic concept of Aristotle, followed by Alexander, Julius Caesar in destroying the Roman Republic & setting up the tyrannical Empire, giving power to psychopaths like Nero, Domitian, & Heliogabalus, & also preached by Dante, would seem to be the furthest thing from libertarianism. And Aristotle's belief in the oppression of women was much in accordance with his tyrannical political philosophy. Plato's Republic is much more humanistic, & included social, economic, & political equality for women.
— Elliot; N. Merrick, New York
1. I don't oppose public schools. I oppose tax supported schools and mandatory attendance requirements. 2. Why should the rights of women be the same as the rights of men? The belief that they are isn't a law of nature. It's an assumption. As such, it should not be coercively imposed by legislation. Rights do not arise from legislation, but from custom and exercise.
Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth
What do you think of the Starr investigations, in Washington D.C.?
I didn't know that there were any astronomers in Washington D.C.
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— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor