LOYALTOLIBERTY.COM

LOYALTOLIBERTY.COM: "For years I have made the point that the key problem with discussing our so-called health care system is that we don't have one. The system focuses mainly on taking care of people when they get sick. It's a sickness care system. This system ends up producing two things: more sickness and ever-increasing costs. This makes sense, since the people who own and work the system mainly derive their income from sick people.

Think of the old Maytag commercials, featuring a Maytag repairman with too much time on his hands, because Maytag washers rarely break down. The manufacturers could afford to make a joke of his idleness. Demand for their products didn't depend, in the first instance, on mechanical breakdowns, but on the endless supply of dirty clothes. But the sickness care sector is rather like the repairman. Its income depends on the possibility and frequency of breakdowns.

Unlike the demand for washing machines, however, the demand for a properly functioning human body doesn't rise in relation to some other product. The body has an intrinsic value, like the human being whose existence in this world depends upon it. But just as they take existence for granted until it's threatened, people generally tend to take the body for granted until it's ailing. Then they seek the services of someone who can restore its proper functioning. This obviously complicates the incentives of the person who has the"