Two of my "progressive Christian" acquaintances have recently made the claim that Americans have a moral obligation to ensure that all persons have health insurance. To them I have posed the following questions, but they have either declined or proven unable to answer.
(1) Whence this moral obligation? How does one come to such a conclusion?
(2) How extensive is the obligation? Must everyone have full coverage for all medical, dental, and pharmaceutical needs, or will lesser levels of coverage satisfy our putative moral obligation? If the latter, are not free market solutions the most efficacious? I wholeheartedly agree with you that this is a complex problem requiring a complex solution. History teaches that markets produce better solutions to complex problems than governments.
(3) What principled limitation exists on our putative moral obligation? Moral obligations are universal. For example, my moral obligation not to take innocent human life extends both to Americans and to non-Americans. On your reasoning, why are we not also morally obligated to provide health care to the billions of uninsured and impoverished in nations other than our own?
(4) How are we to discharge our moral obligation without infringing upon personal autonomy? Some people simply don't want to spend the money for health insurance, and others (particularly the young and healthy) don't need to.
I am trying to avoid the conclusion that these questions have no intelligible answers and that my acquaintances are trying to foreclose debate by calling names. The conclusion becomes more difficult to resist the longer they fail to answer these simple questions.
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2 comments:
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for intelligible answers...
Sadly it is not just the accomodaters who think like this. Supposedly free-market Republicans in Congress are now adopting liberal rhetoric on the issue of health care being a right.
The reason they are adopting the rhetoric is that they feel that the public debate has already been lost on the issue. Americans, by and large, are ready to accept some form of universal health care. The battle now is not over WHETHER to insure every American, but how and at what level. The only way to stave off a massive and unsustainable enlargement of the federal government is to win the battle of "how" -- private market forces are the only means available to us to insure every American adequately.
We have come a long way since defeating Hillary-care, and it is scary. When we defeated Hillary-care it was sufficient to demagogue her ridiculous plan and to point out that it was socialism. That won't work anymore, now we are in a position where we must provide an alternative means to provide coverage for everyone.
Your progressive Christian friends have confused a "social" obligation for a moral one. The moral they speak about is the universal Christian moral of care for the less fortunate. The "social obligation" of healthcare arises from this moral obligation.
The mistake is to think that the moral obligation is sufficient to cause the social obligation. That is the link that has to be proved. It is reasonable to think that we owe a special social obligation to other Americans just like you would your family.
We probably all agree on the moral. The debate is about what kind of social obligation this causes.
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