Their questions include:
How will health reform legislation affect existing insurance coverage?(Read the full text of "Five Questions On Health Reform Americans Should Be Asking Now".)
Does the final bill lower the government's unsustainable spending commitments for existing programs (Medicare and Medicaid) or expand them?
Given Congress' track record on spending, what is the realistic projection for the cost of health reform when it's fully implemented?
If health reform does generate a surplus, will this money be used to pay down the debt — or fund new government spending?
How will adding a new, government-run insurance program increase competition in private insurance markets?
From an economic perspective, those are all good questions.
But unless opponents also challenge the more fundamental moral and philosophical underpinnings of these proposals, raising such primarily economic concerns will be insufficient.
As Dr. Leonard Peikoff pointed out in "Health Care Is Not A Right":
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea -- which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical -- it does not work -- but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice.
