A tip on debating healthcare

The debate over repealing Obamacare is not so simple as free markets vs. human lives.

The market principles here are simply fact. Health care is a scarce good – this is why we have a problem in the first place. People can’t get as much as they want. We need a balanced economic solution, not mere demands that “healthcare is a right or people will die.” That gets us nowhere. It does nothing to solve the problem of scarcity, cost and sustainable rationing.

The health care debate ought to be about tradeoffs and maximizing utility beneath an equitable regulatory framework. Not a discussion of moral absolutes (i.e., “By repealing the ACA, you just voted to kill people!”). That’s unhelpful and immature and, frankly, exhibits a gross misunderstanding of how almost anything in life works.

Health care is a scarce good. The laws of economics should confine our thinking about moral absolutes with regard to who “deserves” health care. It’s simply unhelpful to demand healthcare for all without first deciding exactly how that is going to be possible.