Posted by
Playful Walrus on Thursday, July 23, 2009 1:36:30 PM
One way we can truly lower the overall collective cost of health care is to decrease the amount of health care needed.
People mostly need health care due to:
-
- Disease/sickness
- Injury/trauma
- Pregnancy/birth
Should we work to reduce all three of these things? Some people say yes. Just about everyone says we should continue to work to reduce the first two.
But how do we go about doing that? Should be we use forced wealth redistribution - such as taxpayer money - to encourage people to behave in ways that make them less likely to get sick or injured? Should we tax certain products and services to discourage their use, because using them is linked to higher likelihood of illness or injury? Should we use force to try to prevent people from engaging in those behaviors or using those products at all?
The more any government engages in any of those things, the less personal freedom there is. Is that what you want? Maybe something you like to eat will be made illegal. Maybe a sport or other recreational activity or even bedroom activity you enjoy will be deemed too dangerous and banned.
Most likely, courts will protect most of those private, voluntary behaviors from being banned, so the costs from those will continue to rise. But the courts certainly won't stop them from being taxed. So get ready to pay even more in taxes.
There are other ways of going about this. Private money (VOLUNTARILY provided) can be used on programs, projects and campaigns to encourage healthy behaviors and discourage unhealthy and risky behaviors.