Theft at the Public Till
providers to pay for the uninsured. They didn’t suggest similar taxes on lawyers to keep the courts going or taxes on schoolteachers to keep cash- strapped schools open. They rationalized the approach by saying that it recirculates medical dollars, thus preventing health care from absorbing even more money. But that’s a spurious argument. If society fails to control social ills, medicine can’t be expected to absorb sicker patients without increased costs. If society wants unlimited technology, it has to be willing to pay for it. Society must decide how much medicine it wants, a decision that opponents decry as rationing. But ultimately, cost control is rationing. Society cannot simply open the faucet and expect providers to offer an unlimited torrent of services. We have to accept that providing a certain level of health care is a social good-an ethical obligation not a commodity to be traded by special interests. To do this, if we are to do it fairly, health care has to be rationally distributed. Health care isn’t a right, like free speech, but a service that for society’s sake-both practical and moral should be offered to all. Unlike rights, services are directly tied to dollars. We have to decide how much we want to spend, then spend it as rationally and fairly as possible. How much we spend is not the doctor’s decision, but society’s. How best to spend it becomes an issue for medical experts. What does government do in response to these problems? Well every problem has a “victim.” And every victim is entitled to relief. So govern- ment creates a program and the program begets a bureaucracy. Self interest takes over. We spend untold billions each year fighting a national addiction to drugs. Yet, the “War on Drugs” is lost. It was as inappropriate a war to wage as any in our history. Why do we choose to ban some drugs and not others? Tobacco is more dangerous and more addictive than cocaine. Alcohol is no better, and perhaps worse in many ways, than marijuana. The war should be fought against the effects drugs have had on our society not on the drugs themselves. But to change the focus of this war means fighting those who profit from it.
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