Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute has a new article on "The Value of Innovation in Health Care". It's well worth reading the entire piece.
One point that can never be emphasized enough is that innovation comes from the free exercise of the rational mind. The human mind requires freedom to function. That is why men need the freedom to think and the freedom to act according to their best judgment. Only force can stop the mind from functioning, which is why the initiation of force is anti-life.
When government protects individuals from the initiation of force, it protects individual rights and promotes life. In contrast, when government initiates force against honest citizens, it stifles the human mind, and thus prevents exactly the sort of life-fostering innovation that Grace-Marie Turner describes.
That is the real evil of government-run medicine. By smothering the mind, it smothers life itself.
(Disclaimer: Although Turner's piece portrays the Bush administration in a favorable light, this post should not be construed as any kind of endorsement of Bush-era policies. President Bush has been anything but a principled defender of free markets or individual rights.)
The blog of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine (FIRM)
