Saturday, February 9, 2008

It's Not All About Canada



Showing one example of a poorly done universal, social, or single-payer health care system is not sufficient for demonstrating the failures of the idea itself (cf. "Composition Fallacy"). There are plenty of poorly done churches, but that doesn't mean that the idea of church is fundamentally flawed. There are plenty of poorly done marriages, but that doesn't mean that nobody should get married. You get the idea.

In this case, the government has outlawed private health care services altogether. Aside from an apparently poorly done program overall (vis-à-vis Medicare), this was one of the main causes of the problem this poor citizen faced. Another problem was that the government refused to refund the health service that he had arranged for himself. Neither of these practices is essential to universal, social, or single-payer health care, and do not have to be mirrored.

There may yet be reasons to dissuade me from leaning toward support of some type of liberal health care system, but I am underwhelmed by this video and find myself yet unconvinced of the severe errors of the mere notion of universal, social, or single-payer health care.

I am still working through the issue, and I have a lot of material to go through (thanks Brandon).

But have I missed anything concerning the arguments put forth in this video?

3 comments:

  1. The main purpose of those videos is to show real life examples of people using comparative systems.

    Of course its fallacious to say that universal (or whatever) health care is bad because Canada failed, but its also equally fallacious to say that Canada can't teach us anything about the consequences of universal health care. (However, it is not a fallacy to explain why Canada has failed and then explain that this will cause all other attempts to fail as well).

    "Why Socialized Medicine Leads to Prohibition of Private Medicine"
    http://blog.mises.org/archives/004710.asp

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  2. I feel like I understand the intent of the video, but clash with its undertones.

    "it is not a fallacy to explain why Canada has failed and then explain that this will cause all other attempts to fail as well"

    Such a move would be a "fallacy" if the reason why Canada "failed" isn't essential to systems similar to Canada's. This is what I suggest this video is implying - that we should believe universal, social, or single-payer healthcare, if instituted in the United States, would "fail" since Canada has "failed".

    Such an implicature isn't exactly fair, since the problematic features of Canada's system that are highlighted in this video do not have to be replicated in another such heath care setup.

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  3. I understand, but the article I linked to gives an example as to why all attempts for the government will lead to similar situations. Its not arguing by saying Canada failed, so everyone else will too. Its saying Canada failed, here is why, and here is why all other attempts will also fail.

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