Mises Daily

Why ObamaCare Will Fail: A Reading List

The healthcare market is like all other sectors of society: it functions best under conditions of freedom.

The Supreme Court today upheld “Obamacare,” a massive economic intervention ostensibly designed to cure the ills of American healthcare. Of course those ills were themselves caused by intervention, and this “cure” will only make the situation even worse. The “cycle of interventionism” Mises warned us about continues to intensify.

As Murray Rothbard wrote,

Our very real medical crisis has been the product of massive government intervention, state and federal, throughout the century; in particular, an artificial boosting of demand coupled with an artificial restriction of supply. The result has been accelerating high prices and deterioration of patient care. And next, socialized medicine could easily bring us to the vaunted medical status of the Soviet Union: everyone has the right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care.

      We have put together this healthcare reading list so as to help the concerned citizen understand how we got where we are, and where we are likely headed if we continue on this path.

Articles

Journals

  • “Socialized Medicine, Take Two” by Jeffrey Herbener, The Free Market

  • “Socialized Medicine in America” by Timothy D. Terrell, The Free Market

  • Two Book Reviews by Dale Steinreich, Drury University, The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Vol. 9, No. 3 (Fall 2006): 75–85 (PDF)

    1. Lives at Risk: Single-Payer National Health Insurance Around The World. By John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave, Devon M. Herrick Lanham. Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

    2. Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer. By Sally C. Pipes. San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute, 2004.

Audio & Video

  • “Health Economics” by Walter Block, Mises University, July 31, 2009 (MP3)

  • “Economics of Risk and Insurance: From Healthcare to Welfare” by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Mises University, July 29, 2009 (MP3)

  • Mises Blog: “Health care: the government is the problem” (Video)

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