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POV: How Not To Fight Against Socialized Medicine
by Ayn Rand | 1963
50 Years Down the Road of Socialized Medicine
by Rituparna Basu | July 30, 2015
Is Obamacare Here to Stay?
by Don Watkins | August 11, 2014
What’s missing from the Obamacare debates
by Tom Bowden | March 11, 2014
Obamacare creates a new class of free riders
by Rituparna Basu | January 23, 2014
Obamacare Is Suffocating An Already Sick Health Insurance Patient
by Rituparna Basu | January 22, 2014
The Broken State of American Health Insurance Prior to the Affordable Care Act: A Market Rife with Government Distortion
by Rituparna Basu | January 21, 2014
Obamacare is Really, Really Bad for You, Especially If You're Young
by Rituparna Basu | August 21, 2013
How Obamacare Law Fleeces the Young
by Rituparna Basu | April 26, 2013
It’s time to unplug Medicare’s third rail
by Rituparna Basu | November 26, 2012
I’ll Buy My Own Contraception, Thanks
by Rituparna Basu | November 13, 2012
Will FDA choke off promising adult stem cell research?
by Keith Lockitch | August 10, 2012
How Important Is the Obamacare Litigation?
by Tom Bowden | August 12, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved With Pre-existing Conditions (Part 3)
by Yaron Brook | April 06, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions (Part 2)
by Yaron Brook | March 10, 2011
The Road to Socialized Medicine Is Paved with Pre-existing Conditions
by Yaron Brook | February 10, 2011
The Avastin Travesty
by Tom Bowden | December 12, 2010
You Are Not Your Neighbor's Health Care Provider
by Yaron Brook | May 11, 2010
What About Private Health Emergencies?
by Tom Bowden | April 08, 2010
The Right Vision Of Health Care
by Yaron Brook | January 08, 2008
Be Healthy or Else!
by Yaron Brook | October 22, 2007
No Right to “Free” Health Care
by Onkar Ghate | June 11, 2007
Prescription Drug Benefits Violate the Rights of Drug Companies
by Onkar Ghate | July 24, 2002
Health Care Is Not a Right
by Leonard Peikoff | December 11, 1993
Medicine: The Death of a Profession
by Leonard Peikoff | 1989

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Government & BusinessHealth Care

No Right to “Free” Health Care

by Onkar Ghate | June 11, 2007

The cause of the U.S. health-care mess is governmental interference. The solution, therefore, is not more governmental control, whether via nationalized medical insurance or a government takeover of medicine.

Health insurance costs so much today because the government, on the premise that there exists a “right” to health care at someone else’s expense, has promised Americans a free lunch. When a person can consume medical services without needing to consider how to pay for them — Medicare, Medicaid, or the individual’s employer will foot the bill — demand skyrockets. The $2,000 elective liver test he or she would have forgone in favor of a better place to live suddenly becomes a necessity when its cost seems to add up to $0.

As the expense of providing “free” health care erupts accordingly, the government tries to control costs by clamping down on the providers of health care. A massive net of regulations descends on doctors, nurses, insurers, and drug companies. As more of their endeavors are rendered unprofitable, drug companies produce fewer drugs, and insurers limit their policies or exit the industry.

Doctors and nurses, now buried in paperwork and faced with the endless, unjust task of appeasing government regulators, find their love for their work dissipating. They cut their hours or leave the profession. Many young people decide never to enter those fields in the first place.

What happens when demand skyrockets and supply is restricted? The price of medicine explodes. What was once to serve as a free lunch for everyone becomes lunch for no one.

The solution? Remove all controls. Recognize each citizen’s right and responsibility to pay for his or her own health care, and return to insurers the entrepreneurial freedom to come up with innovative products.

True freedom would bring health care into the reach of the average U.S. citizen again — just as it has done for other goods and services, such as computers, cell phones and food.

About The Author

Onkar Ghate

Chief Philosophy Officer and Senior Fellow, Ayn Rand Institute