Going off the dole: a prudential and ethical critique of the healthfare state

Abstract

The present 'healthfare' state in the United States is neither practically nor morally justified. The nation currently fails to provide adequate access to health care for tens of millions of uninsured citizens. To suggest that the United States' half-million physicians should provide their care as charity is an inadequate solution. The transfer of assets from the 'haves' to the 'have-nots' through taxation in a 'healthfare state' undermines human compassion, and fails to respect minimal moral requirements. However, alternative strategies are possible. During the next 20 years health care could come to be financed on the basis of sound quasi-libertarian moral and prudential principles. In the interim deliberate political action is required to achieve novel health policy, available and affordable job and career training, and universal employment. It is possible to achieve universal access to adequate health care while sustaining individual choice, and at the same time to reduce or virtually eliminate taxpayer-subsidized health care. This approach would, in time, eliminate the healthfare state and eventually encourage and even require citizens to go off the healthfare dole.