What people need is health care. Yet on both (or every) side of the current health care debate the discussion centers on how people will obtain insurance, not how people will obtain health care. Why is it assumed by everyone that a third-party payer should be the primary way that people pay for health care? And that the obligation of the third party to pay should be secured not by the consumer but by a fourth party (their employer or government)? Even Dr.
Tom Woods spoke last night at the UConn School of Business, opposite Tom McInerney, ING Chairman & CEO Insurance Americas (which received $3 billion euros in bailout money from the Dutch government). The topic was “Too Big to Fail?: Perspectives on Government Intervention During Economic Collapse.” Reports from audience members overwhelmingly agree that Woods absolutely wiped the floor with McInerney.
I spoke to the local Campaign for Liberty group last night and wanted to thank everyone who made it an excellent event. It was everything a speaker could want: a large and enthusiastic crowd (they said they counted 72 people, I think), great conversation, and excellent questions peppered with healthy skepticism. My long-run optimism is, perhaps, a bit schizophrenic. We’ve made a mess of things recently, and I don’t think we’re making very good policy right now.
Libertarian theorists like to trace social and economic problems to coercive, usually government-imposed or sanctioned interventions in the free market or restrictions on the exercise of the libertarian rights of self-ownership, private appropriation and use of material resources, and exchange by mutual consent.
