by American Citizen

Created on: September 02, 2009   Last Updated: September 03, 2009

Senator Ted Kennedy and Henry Ford both had dreams of providing a valuable product for everyone. For Kennedy, it was universal health care. For Ford, it was an automobile. Both ideas appeal to many people, but there is a major difference. Ford appealed to capitalism, to the voluntary exchange market. Kennedy appealed to socialism, to the coercive force of government.

An automobile provides mobility. It can be strictly utilitarian, recreational, luxuriant, for display only, a volitional combination, or foregone entirely. Freedom of movement is an endowed right. If one isn't free to move around, one cannot exactly pursue happiness. Just as attainment of happiness is not a right, neither is the means of movement.

No one is required to have an automobile. No one is required to purchase one from a particular manufacturer or dealership. One can't get one for free while someone else is forced to pay for it, either. A "disadvantaged" class of citizens can't get cars while another self-sustaining class pays for it. That would not sit well with anyone, except perhaps Kennedy's constituents.

What will universal health care provide? The terms have yet to be defined. Does health care mean the hands on care of medical provider or health insurance coverage? Will any and every patient have the right to demand of any and every doctor, dentist, optician to treat herself for any and every condition?

Will every insurance company be required to cover every possible health condition? Kennedy never answered these questions because reality precludes that ability. They are utopian in nature.

In the meanwhile, the argument over public option and nationalized health care invariably invokes France, Great Britain and Canada. Even Howard Dean made the case that Great Britain and France arrived at nationalized health care after WWII, while America was not devastated. It sounded intelligent, and it was. But it missed the point.

Nationalized health care, as I was told by a nurse who works in Canada, works nicely for those in need of urgent care. It completely fails those seeking routine care. Those other countries are in different phases of a single system that ultimately leads to where no one is mentioning: the defunct Soviet Union. They rely on a fallacy: that anything of value can be had without an exchange of equal value.

That central planning can solve complex problems without knowing who is being served and who is being expected to pay. They rely on force, and the government is licensed

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