this post was submitted on 19 May 2024

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If you are a Libertarian and hold liberty as your core value, why do you not believe in universal healthcare? Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death. (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (6 children)

I believe in universal basic income, because it is simple and easy to define, and therefore doesn’t have these two problems

Universal healthcare is problematic because of two things:

How much is covered? Because healthcare isn’t fungible like money is, unlike UBI, UH has a problem where a ton of attention and discussion is required to determine what’s covered and what isn’t. It becomes a “to each according to his need” scenario where “his need” is being determined by the central committee
Once society is promising to take care of my body, I now have to promise to society to take care of my body. If I want to take risks with my own health or safety, there is now opposition to that from others on the basis that I’m ruining their investment. This means less self-ownership and less liberty.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (8 children)

I am libertarian-ish, but generally don't like all the loud libertarian nuts (I register Dem and vote Dem because the things I care about aren't represented anywhere on the ballot anymore).

For me, it comes to a very simple economics truism: Governments are pretty damn inefficient and tend to waste a lot of money because of the process and bureaucracy. Markets on the other hand, tend to be really efficient at allocating capital when left alone. The times a government should step in is when the market has created a form of externality that breaks things. The old economics example is the people downstream from a chemical plant are paying the price for the plant's pollution.

From a libertarian lens:

The government should negotiate SPH b.c. it's obvious that markets failed and we'd all be better off (spend less money) if everyone had healthcare.
The government should stay out of people's bedrooms and love lives, it has no business there.
The government should use UBI and then eliminate every other deduction, and tax break, and subsidy (Social Sec, . The office running UBI could be one guy sending checks out once a month (exaggerated obvi)

Unfortunately the things I'd like to see from a libertarian don't actually show up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The biggest government program is socialized medicine, aka Medicare. The “market” aka private health insurance, costs on average 16% more than Medicare for the same services and population. Your view of government efficiency is tilted by decades of corporate media manipulation and is blatantly false.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Nothing impacts liberty more than sickness and death.

Or old and sick. Or old and dead. "It's better be young and healthy, than old and sick".

New quote in my quotational quotes quollection.

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