Monday, November 19, 2012

Adalja On The Responsibility Of the Individual

In the 11/18/2012 Forbes, Dr. Amesh Adalja explains: "Want To Fix Healthcare? Acknowledge That It's the Responsibility Of the Individual".

A key excerpt:
It is indisputable that, for the majority of individuals, obtaining health insurance of some sort -- catastrophic or ordinary -- is an advisable financial decision. Health care plays a crucial role in one’s life and can literally be life-saving in certain situations; health insurance can protect financial solvency in such situations. It is also clear that having healthy employees who maintain their health is in the interest of every corporation, as employee well-being is an important component of profitability.

While these facts suggest that it may be a prudent decision for an individual to purchase health insurance or firms to offer health insurance as an employment perk, there is no justification for the government to nullify individual rights by forcing individuals to provide for the healthcare of others -- irrespective of the effect on the national economy.

A government’s sole function is the protection of individual rights; all other functions the modern U.S. government has assumed are usurpations which have required the violation of the very rights the government was established to protect. This strictly delimited function of government requires the establishment of a police force, a military, and a judiciary system. As such, the government’s position on the economy of the nation should not be to steer it or bolster it, but to stay out of it...
Dr. Adalja also makes the point that government policies have artificially increased the costs of health care and health insurance, thus contributing to the very "problem of the uninsured" that ObamaCare is supposed to address.

The current approach wrongly elevates collectivist goals ("the national economy") over the individual.

The only antidote is to return the focus where it belongs -- to the individual. This means respecting the individual's right (and responsibility) to make his own health insurance and health care decisions according to his own best judgment for his own benefit free from government compulsion.

(Read the full text of "Want To Fix Healthcare? Acknowledge That It's the Responsibility Of the Individual".)