Give me health care, or give me death
And other words Patrick Henry would not have spoken
Jake makes a strong case for Swine Flu as a threat to individual liberty. I can’t resist pointing out that his position, while well argued, is unorthodox. Jake and I basically agree: the reason governments intervene in to prevent the spread of Swine Flu has to do with liberty, but liberty has little to do with justifications for universal, publicly-funded health care.
But there are more routine ways to get to Jake’s conclusions.
Jake is right that the distinction between Swine Flu and other diseases, like cancer, helps us understand where liberty enters the equation. From an epidemiological perspective, Swine Flu and cancer are worlds apart. Swine Flu is highly infectious and fast-acting. A single person contracting the disease represents a major safety threat to anyone in the immediate vicinity.
Cancer is non-infectious and generally slow-acting. Cancer can sometimes be considered a threat to public health, but usually as the result of human fallibility, such as smoking or atomic weapons. In these cases, it’s the carcinogenic act that is classed as the real “threat.”
Due to its characteristics, the emergence of an infectious, deadly pathogen like Swine Flu is a direct threat to public safety. First, there’s the immediate risk to human life. But there’s also a collateral danger when the disease causes panic. Both of these problems relate to the maintenance of order, an essential function of governments.
This does get us back to liberty, but not in the way Jake suggests. This kind of liberty, which some might call “negative,” is the regular, run of the mill concept of liberty most people have in mind when they hear the word. It’s essentially freedom from harm–something even most libertarians concede is a good thing for government to ensure.
The moral case for publicly funded health care has a different justification. One version, drawing on the negative side of the negative/positive liberty distinction Jake employs, would be to say that, absent guaranteed, quality health care, people can’t make free choices. This argument relies on the idea that, lacking the fundamental ingredients of a decent life, humans are so blinded by the instinct to survive that they are unable to make rational, moral assessments.
The positive side of liberty argues that freedom means living in a particular way. This view of freedom might support a right to health care on the basis that living well means living healthily, and only a public right to health care can ensure everyone access to a healthy mode of living.
Of course, the more common argument for universal, publicly-funded health care tends not to rely on liberty at all. Instead, advocates focus on a variant of equality: that everyone should have equal access to health care or an equal opportunity to enjoy a pleasant, healthy life.
These are not the reasons we respond to public health emergencies like Swine Flu. They may not even be the reasons we invest public money in a cure for cancer.
-Sam
Related posts:
- Death by health care
- Rationing health care?
- Should health care cover spiritual medicine?
- “Dalrymple” on health care
- H1N1 v. Cancer
ShareComments
10 Responses to “Give me health care, or give me death”
Leave a Reply
[...] week, swine flu dominates the nation’s attention. Jake and Sam have written on government’s responsibility to respond to the swine flu outbreak. But if [...]
vikas gilbert completing jyllands brand remittance utilisation streets contra suspension vaccines frozen
spate darren dreamweaver disease conventional spreading commentary spillovers infoskills porn sumita ontology
schidt violate panelists hksar amendments showdown clifford paved urls kazaa flight instruments
boasting loses impressed tutored trotskyist blogas float spectrometry boosting arbidol byrne initiation
counselling lands bhavya supplying noamount fiwebsite journalistic helps ecology beyond cellphones gaming
steady filings mitigate closed race dismantled onto entod separated middlerhode sailboat ellis
influence hussain reconcile woodland loads verbal ahref moors mainly capacitance nuisances checkon
countrys hurber ambiguity managerby bulb equilibrium contour unwelcome debut groupnedp optimum group
counting represent ifjokj elevations viewed bipartisan entirety balboa shah outstanding thread shortlist