Ever since the start of the coronavirus crisis, a number of libertarians have taken the position that President Trump and federal officials have mismanaged the crisis. They point out all the things that Trump and federal officials have done wrong, and they detail all the bad consequences of their efforts to resolve the crisis.
Their points are all well-taken. The problem lies in their policy recommendations. When asked for their recommendations on resolving the crisis, they fall back into classic statist mode by coming up with things that they feel the president and his healthcare team should have done — and should still do — instead.
Such libertarians just don’t get it, or maybe they do and they just don’t want to lose credibility or respectability within the mainstream press by calling for a “radical” (i.e., libertarian) solution to the crisis.
An inherently defective paradigm
The problem with the coronavirus crisis — and America’s healthcare crisis in general — lies not with governmental mismanagement of healthcare. It lies with the concept of government management of healthcare itself.
If you have an inherently bad system, then it doesn’t matter who is managing it or what healthcare recommendations are adopted for managing it. The results are still going to be bad.
That’s because an inherently bad system cannot be made to work, not by anyone. Put 100 of the best libertarians in a room with 100 of the top healthcare experts in the country. Give them 200 of the best, fastest computers in the world. Leave them there for a month. Let them come up with their best public policy proposals for fixing America’s healthcare crisis.” Adopt all their reform proposals, including their favorite — “health savings accounts.” The results will still be bad.
That’s because America’s healthcare system is a socialist system. Despite the never-dying hopes of socialists all over the world, socialism is a bad system. Not only is it founded on immoral principles, it also produces very bad results.
Medicare, Medicaid, and central planning
There are two socialist aspects of America’s healthcare system, both of which play major roles in the overall healthcare crisis and the coronavirus crisis.
One aspect involves Medicare and Medicaid, two socialist programs that forcibly take money from one group of people through taxation and give it to another group of people. It is these two socialist programs that are the cause of America’s soaring healthcare costs, which have bankrupted or impoverished so many people.
The other aspect involves the socialist concept of central planning, one that is based on government managing, controlling, and regulating a peaceful activity. In the healthcare arena, we are talking about such federal agencie as the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control, and the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
It is these two socialist aspects of America’s healthcare system that are the root cause of America’s healthcare crisis generally and the coronavirus crisis specifically. Their faults and failures, as detailed so well by conservatives and reform-oriented libertarians, are the natural consequence of socialism.
Reform proposals
Some libertarians, unfortunately, have fallen into the same trap that afflicts conservatives and progressives — that if the federal government would just adopt their “libertarian” healthcare reform plans, everything would be hunky dory.
But it wouldn’t be hunky dory. That’s because socialism is an inherently defective paradigm. It cannot be made to work by anyone, not even by libertarians. No plan to fix America’s socialist healthcare system is capable of working. The day that that reality finally dawns on a critical mass of American people, including the reform-oriented faction within the libertarian movement, will be the day that America finally gets back on the right track with respect to sound healthcare and healthcare liberty.
Only one healthcare solution
What is the right track? A total free-market healthcare system, one in which there is no governmental involvement at all. A total separation of healthcare and the state, just as our ancestors achieved a separation of church and state. No more Medicare and Medicaid. No more FDA, Centers for Disease Control, and presidential healthcare task forces.
That’s the only system that is going to work. The free market produces the best of everything. It is the only system that is founded on moral principles. It is also our heritage as Americans. It was the abandonment of that free-market heritage that put us where we are today — in a society of ever-increasing healthcare socialism, tyranny, oppression, death, and suffering.
The only way we can achieve a paradigm shift of that magnitude is by reaching a critical mass of people who demand such a shift. The way to achieve that critical mass is by making the case for genuine healthcare liberty to our fellow Americans. Remaining mired in the muck of healthcare “reform” proposals just won’t cut it.