Liberty is rare in human history if you are not rich, powerful, or in the right group. That’s a very sad truth, because for a Christian, the more liberty a society can maintain, the closer we have gotten to God . . . who is the author of liberty. Ideally, morality would be each person’s job, the laws would be written on our heart, and government could be tiny.
That is not the world we have inherited or the world we have made.
We are broken and so the good we would do, we cannot do.
Ideally, I favor healthcare provided by people to people. The government should be unneeded in a pluralistic society, government control of healthcare will result in continuous social warfare. Why? In our broken world, the ethics of healthcare will be impossible to settle without severe loss of liberty. If my values were to prevail, then those who think killing unborn children isn’t killing unborn children would be angry. We would not fund abortions. On the other hand, if my values were to fail, then those of us opposed to abortion would be forced to fund abortions by our tax dollars.
The cost of government doing anything is moral anguish for somebody. The pacifist in the United States must pay for the greatest war machine ever produced by humankind.
Having said that, a Christian never regrets the good that is done by anyone. Socialized medicine has liabilities, but it also does good. People who might struggle, lose nest eggs, go into poverty do not. People who might not go to the doctor do and problems are caught early.
I celebrate all these good things. If government got totally out of health care, I would be sorry to see these goods go . . . even if I thought that (on the whole) society would be better off with more liberty. The difficulty for lovers of liberty is simple: the harm done by government not doing a thing is immediate and obvious, while the loss of liberty and the cost to creativity is not obvious.
We cannot know the medical innovations we have missed by increasing control: if we gave everyone a horse and buggy would anyone have gotten cars?
The trouble for liberty lovers is that “liberty” is abstract until lost or “the bad guys” get the levers of power. I have been and remain opposed to widespread “executive orders” or the legislature deferring law making powers to the administrators in government. This is an erosion of republican values and democratic oversight, but good does come of it. As a result, team A cheers when President A issues A-ism as executive orders and then team B cheers as President B undoes A-ism in the name of B-ism.
We only fear for liberty when we imagine our own private dystopia where A or B have gotten all they want and forced our views into exile.
Yet still it is never the good we should oppose. I do not think single-payer is the best solution to the American health care system. (I favor something like the system in Singapore.) On the other hand, if we do get single payer, while I will be sad about the loss of liberty, I will be happy people are treated for the diseases.
I am glad for all the good that will be done.
If there is single payer, and all the good that will be done, then traditional Christians (like everyone else) will strive to run the system in a manner consistent with our values. Everyone will do so, if only out of self-defense. That will be hard and will surely lead to more social turmoil as California attempts to make Utah pay for California health care or Alabama tells New York to live by Southern values.
We shall see, but this is true: anyone who gets health care is not the problem. I am glad for them, but liberty lost is very hard to recover. I hope we all pause and consider this fact.
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My ideal plan would look like this.
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