joseph.amanThe page is packed with relevant ideas. Thanks. I’ll be doing some computerless travel in the next days, so I printed some of these articles to read. I especially liked what Hoppe, Block and Berdine had to say on the subject of insurance. When misapplied to healthcare, it seems that insurance creates a vicious economic circle. First it drives up prices for services to the point where even fairly common medical procedures can spell economic ‘catastrophe’ for a family. Then, as this happens, of course people naturally feel that they need to protect themselves from catastrophe by buying insurance… and so on… until the government feels the need, as it now does (and aren’t we late to this party, every other advanced economy having already done it), to step in and protect everyone equally. It’s a complete mess.
Government forms of insurance might be the worst and most extensive case of this, but isn’t private insurance just as much to blame here? Shouldn’t ‘health insurance’ itself be outlawed as encouraging the abusive squandering of resources? Rather than mandate insurance, outlaw it! That would be a welcome and appropriate role of government, it seems to me. Or would a free market economist insist that the business of insurance should be allowed to freely operate in the the health sector as it does now?