There have been several letters favoring a single-payer health care system in this paper recently. Let’s start out by stating our current problems with our healthcare system are not the result of a free market. Historically, whenever someone has pointed to a “deficiency” in our health care system, the solution offered, and usually adopted, has been an increase in government interference in the health care marketplace. The fact is that the health care marketplace has been highly distorted by government and that there is currently very little of the free market left. Consequently, most of the problems we now have in the health care system can be placed at the feet of government, and not at the free market. Single-payer is a government solution for a government-caused problem and the wrong way to go. We need more freedom in our health care system, not less.

Despite what supporters of single-payer might tell you, the truth is that you will not get all the health care you might need or want. You will not get all the health care you or your doctor might decide you need. There is not enough health care infrastructure available now, nor will there ever be, to keep that promise.  Choices will be made, and they will be made by politicians and bureaucrats, not by you and your doctor.  There can be no other way.  I guess that liberals really are in favor of politicians and bureaucrats getting between you and your doctor after all.

With single-payer, you will be telling strangers that they will have to pay for your health care. These strangers will then demand the right to look into the lifestyle choices you make that impact your health and how much of their money is spent on your health care. They will expect to have a say in your lifestyle choices. They will want to mandate some behaviors and ban some others. Is that something anyone wants? That is how single-payer will lead to further erosion of our rights.

With health care, you can pick two out of the following three: universality, affordability or quality. You cannot have all three. Advocates of single-payer have pre-chosen universality. So, which one don’t we get? Affordability or quality?

And don’t be fooled by the argument that health care is either a privilege or a right; since it is not a privilege, it is therefore a right.  That is logical fallacy called a false dichotomy. The fact is, that it is neither. It is a service. This service does not grow out of the ground or fall out of the sky. It only exists because of the mental and physical labor of another human being. To claim a right to health care, is to claim a right to the mental and physical labor of another human being. Owning someone else’s labor is slavery and is morally wrong. Single-payer should not be adopted because it is morally wrong. There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

George Lundstrom

Albert Lea