the true cost of piano lessons

After his doctor recommends an operation, the sick patient asks hopefully:
"But Doctor, will I be able to play the piano?"
"Yes," comes the reply, "I believe you will."
"That's good," says the relieved patient.  "Because I've never been able to play before."

It sounds like an old Marx Brothers routine, but the point is valid: Even the best healthcare can only help so much.

During Wednesday's speech, Obama said, "...in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick." 

Now, a statement like that should ring alarm bells.  Because if you're really sick -- too sick to work, for example, and sick for a long time -- then even with free healthcare a prolonged disability will easily leave you bankrupt.

All of this makes me question the benefits of guaranteeing that nobody be bankrupted by medical costs.  In particular, I'm reminded of free-market economist Friedrich Hayek, and what he called "absolute security."

You see, Hayek was not opposed to social safety nets.  He argued that a wealthy society can afford to provide "limited security" to its citizens who fall on hard times.  But Hayek warned repeatedly against "absolute security" -- that is, against "the security of a given standard of life, or of the relative position which one person or group enjoys compared with others."

What Hayek cautioned against, specifically, was guaranteeing that people would not become poor. 

Limited security -- welfare; a safety net for those who are already at the bottom -- is within a free society's reach.  But absolute security, as Hayek saw it, leads to tyranny.  You cannot promise people that they will never lose their wealth; that their station in life is secure -- not without sacrificing someone's freedom.

So when Obama asserts as a national priority that "no one should go broke because they get sick," I fear for our liberty.

Consider the rationale of the pending House healthcare bill.  Not Obama's politically correct fiction of "eliminating waste and fraud," but its real strategy -- that of redistributing care from the deathly ill to the uninsured. 

It seemed bad enough when I thought Grandma might be asked to take the pain pill so we could provide for some poor person who couldn't afford insurance.

But when I think of Grandma, on her deathbed, having to do with less care in her final days simply so that someone else can be assured of not going broke... well, I think Hayek might have been right about tyranny.

That's the John Galt Line.

Comments

[Ryan Edward]

Man just come up to Canada and see how it works. Free health care rocks.

[J]

well Ryan, allow me to quote a great American author, Robert Heinlein:

"tanstaafl"

There
Ain't
No
Such
Thing
As
A
Free
Lunch

[Ben]

Pretty sure Ryan is being sarcastic...

He just has to be...

The only Canadians I have ever heard of who praised Canada's health care were...

oh, wait...

((From a northern border state))